Not My Family
by MissSadieKane
Summary: Set after Not What You Think. Slightly AU: Regulus has similar views to Sirius but hides them from his family. Follow him through his second and third year as he struggles with family fallouts, annoying classmates, and a brother dangerously determined to become an animagus. Also includes quidditch disasters, Death Eaters and Unforgiveable Curses. Ends with Sirius running away. R&R
1. Chapter 1

_Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or any of the characters associated with the book series._

_Summary: After Andromeda runs away, the Black Family are left distraught. Already troubled by Sirius's refusal to talk to him, Regulus is upset further as he is forced to choose between his two favourite cousins. Sequel to 'Not What You Think'._

_AN: This story is mostly from the point of view of Regulus Black and tells of the events between when Andromeda and Sirius run away. If you haven't read my previous story, all you need to know is that Andromeda has already given birth to Nymphadora; Becky and Steph are Regulus's childhood friends, and that Narcissa (Cissy) is a lot younger than she should be. Regulus is secretly keeping in touch with Andromeda, but no one else in the family knows. This chapter may contain quite a lot of description. The other chapters will have more action: this one is just setting the scene._

**Chapter One: The Wedding**

I carefully held onto my cousin's baby, supporting her head with my other arm. She was absolutely tiny. She gazed back up at me: her eyes not dissimilar to mine, and her hair the same colour too (though it fluctuated between black, brown, blonde and pink, depending on who was next to her). She was metamorphagus, which meant that she could change her appearance at will, though she liked to look like me or Andromeda.

Nymphadora increased her hold on my finger and started pulling it. I didn't see what harm it would do so I let her. It wasn't until I felt something warm and wet that I realised where it had ended up. Luckily, she was still young enough to have not grown any teeth yet.

Today was the day of Andromeda's wedding, hence the reason that neither she nor Ted were currently able to look after their daughter. Since nobody else in my family had been able to come, they'd chosen me to be responsible (though Ted's parents looked a little annoyed about this).

As Nymphadora squirmed around in my arms, I thought about all that had happened in the past few weeks, including that frightening moment when Mother had held her wand up to the tapestry and blasted an enormous hole in it. Since then, Cissy had been crying on and off for hours, and, since everyone else was too busy to do anything about it, it had been left to me to comfort her.

I hadn't really done a very good job of it. I'd tried telling her what I thought: mainly that Andromeda was still the same caring older sister (or cousin in my case) that she always had been, and that marrying someone that was a muggleborn didn't really change anything. Being Cissy, she had let out a stream of horrible language, yelling at me about how disgusting it was to "marry a mudblood" and how much shame her sister had brought to the family. Then she had made me promise never to follow in Andromeda's footsteps. I'd promised her that I would never "get pregnant with the child of a muggleborn and then run away from everyone". Since I had no intention of ever getting pregnant, there was no way I could possibly ever break that promise.

For the majority of the summer, Sirius had hardly said a word to me. He'd spent most of it locked in his room. I wasn't sure if he was sulking because of what had happened with Andromeda, or because Father had had a go at him for lying about his friend Remus being pureblood. I'd tried to get Sirius to come to the wedding with me. Since I'd told Father I was going to my friend Becky's house, though, Sirius didn't really know what I was asking him and had slammed the door in my face.

I wished I'd tried harder with him. So far Nymphadora was a whole month old and Sirius still hadn't seen her yet! He didn't even know she was a metamorphagus! And Nymphadora hadn't met Sirius either: all she had to go on was what Andromeda had told her about him. To make up for it, I'd let her have Sirius II – the toy dog Sirius had given me for my second birthday. She seemed to like it, but it wasn't a very good representation of Sirius.

She had now stopped holding my finger and was reaching up to touch something behind me. I turned around and saw Andromeda and Ted walking down the aisle together. Andromeda was wearing a beautiful white wedding dress, much prettier than the one Bella had had. Behind her were two bridesmaids; each were wearing floor-length blue dresses.

I recognised them both as Andromeda's friends from Hogwarts. One of them was called Amelia. I'd been introduced to her once before and she'd seemed okay. The other was called Sophia and had a younger sister in Cissy's year called Hannah. Hannah was in Gryffindor and Cissy hated her, as did just about everyone in Slytherin. I'd never really talked to her so I didn't really know if I agreed with them or not.

The actual wedding ceremony wasn't really very interesting. There was a lot of talking and a lot of speeches.

After it was over, everyone headed to a different venue for a party.

It didn't take me long to spot my best friends Stephannie (Steph) and Becky. I handed Nymphadora to Ted's parents, who were standing nearby and giving me very odd stares, and ran over to greet them.

"Hi Reggie!" shouted Becky. As usual, she enveloped me in an extremely tight hug and clung to me like a limpet. "I'm so glad you came: I've hardly seen you all summer!" she said. I hugged her back and told her I'd seen her a lot more than I had seen my other friends. In fact, apart from Robert, she was the only friend Mother and Father actually let me talk to outside of Hogwarts. Since Steph was not only a Gryffindor but also a muggleborn, no one except for a select few people in my friendship group knew that we were even friends.

"How's your summer been?" Steph asked.

"Good, I suppose."

"Reg, if your summer was "good" then I'm a crumple-horned snorkack," said Becky.

"Well, we haven't had any visits from the Lestranges, and Father hasn't murdered Sirius yet," I told her. In my book, that counted as a pretty decent holiday. Bella and Rodolphus had gone on a 'holiday' of their own (after listening in on a couple of conversations I'd learnt that it was actually a mission for 'the Dark Lord'), and Rabastan had found a new source of entertainment (probably a muggle). With all three of them away from the house, I hadn't had an unforgiveable curse thrown at me for over a month - neither had Sirius. It was almost a new record.

"That sounds absolutely thrilling," said Steph, sarcastically.

"Have you even been on a broom this month?" asked Becky.

I nodded.

"Other that when you came to my house?"

"No." Sirius hadn't wanted to play. I wasn't sure why: I knew he liked Quidditch because he played it all the time at Hogwarts. He'd even played it with _me_ when I'd used polyjuice potion to pretend to be James Potter. Sometimes I felt like life would be so much easier if I was James. Cissy had not wanted to play quidditch at all. Kreacher was not allowed to ride on a broomstick.

"Exactly. So unless you think playing chess with Kreacher is 'fun', I'd say you've had an absolutely lousy summer," said Becky.

"What do you want me to do about it?" I asked.

"Have some fun of course."

"How?"

"Umm, dance?" suggested Steph.

"Dance? I uh…"

I didn't have time to reply. Steph grabbed both of my arms and started dancing around to the party music. It wasn't really proper dancing so I gave in and showed her how to do it properly: the way my parents had shown Cissy and I how to do it. The music was much faster than the ballroom style music that Bella had had at her wedding, but that was okay. All we had to do was to dance faster and wilder.

"You're quite good at this," whispered Steph, after we'd been dancing quite a while. She was very good at dancing too.

"Mother made it her duty to teach us so that we didn't disgrace the family," I told her. "Sirius hated every minute of it."

"Bet you anything she'd hate it if she saw you now," she said.

"She'd probably burn me alive if she found out I was here at all," I said.

"Well let's just be glad she's not here, what with you dancing with a "mudblood" and all."

"I hate that word."

"Me too," she said.

Half an hour later, we headed off to the side to get some food. On the way, we saw Steph's father, who was talking to a red-haired man that I'd never seen before. Her father grabbed hold of Stephannie so that they could talk.

"Arthur, this is my daughter Stephannie. Steph, this is Arthur Weasley," he said. I'd heard of the Weasley family. Mother had said I was to have nothing to do with them because the whole lot of them were blood traitors. I didn't really care what mother thought anymore: not now she'd burnt my cousin off the family tapestry.

Arthur held out his hand and Stephannie shook it. Then he held out his hand for me to shake, and looked expectantly at me.

"I'm Regulus Black," I said. "I'm not like Mother. I don't think you're…"

"Reg, shut up before you say something stupid," whispered Steph.

"Nice to meet you," he said before turning back to Stephannie. "Your father was just telling me all about eltrical sockets."

"Do you mean electrical?" I asked. He nodded. "Steph told me all about them. You plug muggle things like vacuum cleaners into them to make them work," I told him.

"What are vacuum cleaners?" asked Arthur.

"Oh, they're a muggle invention. They suck up dirt fluff. Muggles don't have cleaning spells you see..."

"Reg, come on! We're supposed to be getting food!" said Steph, pulling me away.

"Isn't that a bit rude? We were having a conversation."

"Well if you want to spend the entire night talking about _vacuum cleaners_…"

"Fine. I'll come, but we purebloods don't know so much about muggle things. To us, electricity is as interesting as magic is to you."

Eventually we found the food. I picked up two plates and handed one to Steph. Then the two of us filled up our plates with the food: Steph took one of every kind of cake or biscuit, while I took some pasta, and salad, and one piece of cake. Her plate had considerably more food on than mine, to which her only response was to dump about six different varieties of chocolate cake on top of my food.

"You need to eat more," she told me.

"You're not my Mother," I told her. Actually, my mother didn't usually care how much I ate. Andromeda was the one who used to fuss and make sure I didn't starve.

"Whatever, but I'm making you eat those cakes."

They were, in fact, very nice. One of them tasted exactly like the chocolate cake Andromeda and Cissy had made me for my twelfth birthday. The only problem was that some of them had been dumped next to the pasta sauce, which didn't really go very well with the chocolate.

"Where do you think Becky has disappeared to?" asked Steph, looking around her. "What the hell? What's _he_ doing here?"

I looked in the direction she was pointing in. There was a man, perhaps a little older than my Dad, standing next to a woman, who looked around the same age. Between them, stood Sirius's best friend, James Potter.

…..

_AN: Sorry this took so long to write. I've been trying to think up a full back story for one of my subplots, and I needed to make sure what I wrote won't contradict what I write later. Thinking up a title took even longer, and I'm still not happy with it. I may change it again. There will be more drama later. This fiction will still have all the tiny bits of detail in as the last one (sorry about the mistake with the thestrals in the last one – I'll change it). _

_Please tell me what you think. Reviews would be nice._


	2. Chapter 2

_Disclaimer: I don't own the 'Harry Potter' series._

_AN: Mentions of the Potters do not correspond directly with the text in 'Not What You Think'. Neither does the scene with James. Some events happened in the prequel, but there are some bits cut out because it was too long. One scene mentioned actually happens the day after the events in Chapter 10._

**Chapter Two: The Wedding Part 2**

I looked again to make sure it really was James Potter before I pushed through the crowd towards him. It was definitely him (unless Becky had decided to use the last of the polyjuice potion, and had managed to acquire two adults that looked uncannily like him to be his parents).

Maybe if I'd known he was coming, I could have told Sirius, and then Sirius would have come with me. I approached James slowly, unsure of what to say or if I should say anything at all.

Unfortunately, his mother spotted me first and started talking to me.

"Hello dear. Are you a relative of Andromeda? You look a lot like her," she asked. Andromeda actually had slightly lighter hair (though it was still dark), and different colour eyes to me. Her facial features, however, were very similar to mine.

"Y-yes. She's my cousin. Are you James Potter's mother?" I asked. Despite having reddish coloured hair and no glasses, she still managed to look a lot like James did. Her hair looked springy, and I was sure that if it was cut shorter, it would be just as untidy as James's always was. Apart from a few grey hairs, James's father looked like a carbon-copy of James.

"Yes. My name's Dorea," she told me.

"Oh, are you that great Aunt we're not allowed to talk about then?" I asked. When Bella had been organising invitations for her own wedding three years ago, she had jokily suggested inviting the Potters. Mother had been furious with her, and afterwards had told us never to mention the Potters, or any of Bella's other suggestions ever again. She had said they were all 'blood-traitors'.

Mrs Potter looked confused, as did Mr Potter. James scowled at me. He'd hated me ever since Sirius had received his first howler from Mother. She had told Sirius that I'd been upset with him being sorted into Gryffindor and that I hated him. It was all a pack of lies, but Sirius and James believed it, and wouldn't let me tell them otherwise.

"What the hell are you doing here, Regulus?" he asked through gritted teeth. He was still glaring at me.

"Now, now, James. That's not very polite is it?" scolded his mother. James ignored her.

"Please don't tell any of my family I'm here. I'm here because I want Andromeda to be happy," I explained. "I'm the only one in our family that still talks to her." That was true. Sirius may have still cared about his cousin, but I knew for a fact that he hadn't written or talked to her since the start of the summer. This wasn't his fault. Mother had been stopping him from using the family owls, and had been monitoring his letters. This was to make sure that Sirius did not write to James, or to the boy that Mother referred to as "that filthy half-breed".

"Yeah right. Like you give a damn about her! You're family are the ones that have disowned her! You're probably here to ruin it for her," said James. He clearly hadn't understood what I'd just said, or at least hadn't believed me. My family might have hated Andromeda, but she was still my cousin. I'd helped her all through the year when she had become pregnant with Nymphadora. I wasn't going to suddenly abandon her just because of her running away!

"James, calm down," said his Mother. She was right - James had a terrible temper.

"No Mum, he's Sirius's brother. His family's the reason Sirius has been upset recently. The whole lot of them are horrible to him…"

"I'm not," I said. "I've never said or done anything to hurt anyone!" In fact it was usually Sirius that did the hurting. I never shouted at or hurt Sirius. Even when Sirius was shouting at me, I would usually stay calm and quiet.

"I find that difficult to believe. You've made it clear you don't want anything to do with Sirius, and who's to say you don't feel the same way about Andromeda!"

"What do you know, James? You hardly know anything about us! You never listen to me!" I shouted. "You and Sirius didn't even know Andromeda was having a baby until it happened," I added quietly. Whenever Andromeda had tried to talk to Sirius about it, he had been too busy talking with James. When I'd tried writing to him about it, Lily had intercepted the letter and Sirius had refused to read it. And when I'd tried to arrange a meeting with Sirirus and Andromeda about the coming baby, Sirius had not turned up.

"So? She didn't tell anyone other than Ted. Why would she have told me and Sirius?" shouted James.

"She told me," I whispered. Tears threatened to run down my cheeks. Why did James never listen to me? Why was he so insistant that I was "evil Slytherin scum like the rest of my family"? If he'd just let me talk it through, I was sure that we would be able to be friends, just like Sirius was.

I turned away, and looked around to see if I could find someone else to talk to. I spotted Ted holding Nymphadora, and made my way over to them. At least they wouldn't shout at me.

…..

After the party had finished I spent the night at Becky's house. Then, the next morning, they took me back to my house. As soon as Becky's family had gone, my parents turned on me, looking absolutely furious.

"Regulus! What is the meaning of this?" Father shouted, pinning me against the wall so that I couldn't move.

"What?" I asked.

"You forgot your towel, so your Mother flooed over to give it to you, only you weren't where you said you were, were you? And then she found this!" he shouted. He held up a card addressed to Becky's parents: their invitation to the wedding.

"We're not as stupid as you think we are, Regulus," said Mother. She wasn't shouting, but I could tell was much angrier with me than father was. "Did you really think you could hide this from us?"

I wanted to say yes. I'd really thought I could do it: last time I'd sneaked out, when Andromeda had been in the hospital with Nymphadora, Mother and Father hadn't known any different. Perhaps I should have told them that Becky's family would all be going out to dinner that evening and that they would not be able to be contacted. I wished I had thought it all through better.

"I shouldn't have to, Mother. She's my cousin. I should be allowed to see her whenever I want to!" I said. I knew deep inside that this wasn't the thing to say – it would make mother furious. However, I wanted Mother to know how I felt, and that I wasn't going to be brainwashed. Secretly I wanted Sirius to over-hear me so he would know how I really felt.

"What is it you don't understand Regulus?" shouted Mother. "She is a blood-traitor! She abandoned us to live with a filthy mudblood!"

"Ted isn't filthy!" I said stubbornly.

"Yes he is, Regulus! And until you learn that, you are to stay in your room," said Father. He proceeded to drag me out of the hallway and up the stairs to my bedroom.

Mother followed, and, when Father left, barged into the room, and cast a silencing charm on the door.

"Regulus, I am extremely disappointed in you," she shouted. "How dare you lie to us about your whereabouts? Your father might not care what you're up to but I do!"

"Yes Mother."

"If I hear of you having any contact with Andromeda, the consequences will be severe," she told me. She then gave me a little 'taster' of what would happen to me and Sirius if I disobeyed, before exiting the room. I was glad when she was gone.

…..

_AN: Thank you so much for reviewing, and for helping me to write 'Not What You Think'. Coming up: Sirius is invited to a party he doesn't want to go to; Regulus learns that his relationship with Sirius isn't as bad as it could be; and Narcissa makes possibly the worst decision of her life. __Please review._


	3. Chapter 3

_Disclaimer: I do not own the 'Harry Potter' series, or any of the magazines, currencies, or inventions mentioned in this chapter._

_AN: In the beginning of this chapter, Regulus is talking about Evan Rosier. Sirius isn't, and is referring to Evan Rosier's brother, who is in his own year group. It is now mid-August, and just over a week since the wedding._

**Chapter Three: Babysitting**

"Sirius! Come here right now!" shouted Mother.

Sirius and Mother were arguing again. It was the usual kind. Mother was telling Sirius that he was a disgrace to the family and was trying to make Sirius act like a "good" son. Sirius didn't want to do that, especially since this involved being forced into dress robes and taken to Evan's house.

"What's the point? Rosier won't want me there anyway!" shouted Sirius. He was almost certainly right about that; almost everyone at Hogwarts knew that the Blacks hated the Rosiers, and the Rosiers hated us too. The only reason Bellatrix hadn't murdered Evan and his brothers, was because it would have upset Aunty, who had been a Rosier before she had married my Uncle.

"Sirius, you are to do as you are told and get changed! Regulus, go and find something useful to do and stop staring."

I'd been standing doing nothing for the last ten minutes; mainly because I couldn't think how to get out of the house. I had to get out because there was nothing to do, and I had promised Andromeda that I would go and see her again now that she had arrived home after a holiday with Ted and Nymphadora. I ran up to my room to where I kept my school text books. Having had nothing to do all summer, I'd completed all my homework already and read some of next year's books. Grabbing hold of 'fantastic beasts and where to find them', I ran down stairs and sat down in the living room with the book on my lap.

By now, Sirius had changed into something that vaguely resembled dress robes. He and Father had entered the room I was sitting in. Father was 'informing' Sirius about how he should behave; making it perfectly clear what would happen if he didn't.

"Father, would it be alright if I was to go and read this in the park?" I asked.

"Yes of course you can, Regulus," replied Father, before continuing to lecture Sirius.

I was glad to get out of the gloomy house and into the fresh air. I had hardly been out at all, since Mother didn't seem to trust me not to run off, and Father usually refused to let me go anywhere by myself. I walked half way to the park, and then did something I never thought I would ever have to do - I got on a muggle bus.

Luckily for me, it wasn't too difficult. Ted had told me which number to get – this particular bus had had a number six on it. I also had a collection of muggle coins from when me and Stephannie had swapped them with each other. I asked the driver for a return ticket to the village where Andromeda lived.

"That will be fifty pence, son," he said. I dug my hand into my pocket and withdrew a collection of different coins; it included knuts, sickles, galleons, and some muggle coins. Remembering what Stephannie had told me, I found the large, silver, funny-shaped coin and looked at it to make sure it had the correct number on it. It did, so I handed it over.

"Is this right?" I asked. I felt rather stupid for not knowing what I was doing.

"Don't worry. A lot of people are still finding it difficult to get used to the changeover, though most of the kids your age have got it by now." I wasn't sure what he had meant by that, so I asked him if I could have cocoa: Sirius had always asked for it when we used to go on the Knight Bus. The driver looked at me very strangely and told me that I was on a 'bus', not a 'train', and that even if I _was_ on a train, I shouldn't be asking the driver for 'cocoa'.

I sat next to a woman reading a magazine article about something called 'gene splicing' (I presumed this was some sort of muggle invention because I had never heard of it). Whatever it was, the article appeared to have a lot of extremely long words in it. The old man opposite was also reading: a fairly thick looking novel that I couldn't see the title of because his fingers were in the way.

Though it was a lot calmer than any of my previous experiences with the Knight Bus, the ride was anything but pleasant. At the second stop, a girl around Bella's age got on with a small toddler and a pram containing two babies. Her eyes looked red from crying so I stood up and let her sit where I'd been. I ended up having to sit in the luggage space, which was slightly more comfortable than standing, and had to listen to all three of the children screaming. I had tried to help but the girl had told me to 'f*** off' and to 'get the hell away' from her daughter. I wondered briefly whether all girls Bella's age had terrible tempers.

I was quite glad when, after over half an hour of travelling, the bus finally stopped on my cousin's road. Saying thankyou to the driver, I jumped off the muggle bus and ran as quickly as possible into Andromeda's house. The door was already open.

"Hello, I'm here!" I shouted as I ran into the hallway and straight into Andromeda's arms. She hugged me back before straightening up and messing up my hair.

"I'm so glad you could come," she told me. "How did you get here without your parents knowing?"

"I used muggle transport," I said. I then proceeded to tell her about Sirius and my parents' argument and about how annoyingly slow buses were. When I had finished, my cousin showed me the way to the living room, and then she hurried off to make cups of tea.

The living room was much smaller than the one at Grimmauld Place, but was still large enough to contain a sofa, two arm chairs and a TV, whilst still having a relatively large area of floor space. The majority of the floor space was taken up by a pink furry rug, upon which my cousin's daughter and a large number of soft toys were lying. Today Nymphadora's hair was a vivid shade of pink to match the rug she was lying on.

I knelt down on the edge of the blanket. Nymphadora had been happily kicking her legs around in the air but had stopped and looked up at me, as I got closer. She then started to reach towards Sirius II – the toy was conveniently lying on the rug too. I think she must have associated the toy with me being there.

"My brother Sirius gave this to me," I told her. "I used to take it everywhere with me, even to Hogwarts. I named it after him you know – Sirius II." Nymphadora was now staring wide-eyed at me. I didn't think she knew what I was talking about, but I decided to tell her about Sirius.

I picked up Sirius II and started to play with it in front of her. I made him walk like a real dog and the rug and made him jump onto her tummy and pretend to nuzzle her.

"I'll introduce you to the real Sirius one day. He used to be the best brother ever: I would follow him everywhere, and copy everything he did, and when I got hurt he would always make me feel better. We used to be inseparable. I think the problems started when we got older and he realised that we ended up in trouble when I tried to copy what he did. Or I'd be clumsy and get us in trouble. He stopped playing with me so much then, but he's still my brother."

"When he went to Hogwarts he made a new best friend called James. Mother hates him but I think you'd like him when you are older because he likes Quidditch and tells jokes all the time. His other friends are called Remus and Peter, but all I know about them is that Remus likes reading and knows loads of really cool spells like Aquamenti – that squirts water. Sirius writes letters to them all the time. He'd probably be doing that now if he wasn't forced to other things."

"Anyway, in case I can't get Sirius to come, I'll tell you that he looks like me only bigger. He likes Quidditch the same as me, and he also likes pranking and doing the opposite of what Mother says." I stopped then because Andromeda came in with two steaming mugs, and sat down on the sofa behind me. I walked over and sat down on her lap.

"It's weird not having you at home," I told her. "Cissy's still upset about it."

"She hates me doesn't she?" she asked. I nodded because I couldn't allow myself to lie to her. "What about Bella?"

I remembered that awful day after Mother had burnt my cousin's name off our family tree. Bella had routed out every single photograph of her sister and proceeded to rip and burn every single one. I had only managed to save one picture. It was of a fifteen-year-old Bellatrix, eleven-year-old Andromeda, seven-year-old Sirius, six-year-old Cissy, and five-year-old me sitting down with a picnic on the beach that we often used to go to as a family.

Bella had then shouted all manner of horrible things about Andromeda. Sirius had then ended up shouting and trying to attack her, while I'd tried to hold him back for fear of angering Bella more -Bella was known for having a terrible temper: she'd almost murdered Evan and his brother once for taking a toy off me on my sixth birthday, and I'd seen what she was capable of when she participated in so-called Death Eater raids. The fight had resulted in Sirius shoving me across the room and trying to hit Bellatrix with 'Impedimenta'. Bellatrix had easily blocked it and shot stupefy at Sirius sending him headlong into a piano. Sirius had been knocked out for over four hours afterwards.

"Bella's angry, but I think she's less shocked than Cissy. She already knew about Ted anyway," I said. Andromeda didn't say anything. There was nothing really to say on the matter that wouldn't make her even more upset, so I put my arm around her instead. We sat in silence for ages, sipping tea every now and again.

Eventually, the silence was broken by Ted, who had just come in from wherever he'd just been. He offered to apparated me close to home because it was getting quite late. He left me at the end of my street and I walked the remainder of the way home.

…..

When I arrived home, neither Mother nor Father questioned me on my whereabouts. I joined Mother and Father for dinner, which Kreacher had prepared for us. I thanked Kreacher, much to my parents distaste, and tucked into my food.

Two hours later, a very grumpy Sirius returned home.

"How was it, Siri?" I asked as he stomped his way up the stairs.

"What do _you_ think, Regulus?"

"They didn't hurt you did they?" I asked. I sincerely hoped they hadn't, but if I had I would be furious. I knew one of Evan's brothers wanted to become a Death Eater. What if they had only invited Sirius so that they could practise curses on him?

"Don't be stupid, Regulus. Their mother was there the whole time, and you know what she's like. I don't think Rosier would've had the guts to hurt me anyway – he jumps at the slightest thing."

"So if you hate _him_, and he hates _you_, why on earth did he invite you to his Birthday Party?"

"I have absolutely no idea. Now can you _please _get out of the way so I can walk upstairs?"

…..

_AN: Narcissa will be taking more of an active role in this story very soon, as will Sirius. You may or may not have picked it up on my 'House Elves' chapter in my last story, but Evan Rosier's mother is a lot more normal than Regulus's. She is the kind of Mother that sings her children to sleep and comforts them when they have nightmares. She also doesn't tolerate bullying, and has no idea what her kids get up to at Hogwarts. Evan Rosier's Father is Cissy and Bella's Uncle._

_In my last story, every few chapters there I wrote in an alternative point of view. I have one chapter with Remus and one chapter with James planned, but if you have any requests please tell me in a PM of review._

_I would really like to hear from you, so please review._


	4. Chapter 4

_Disclaimer: I don't own the 'Harry Potter' books and, unless something very strange happens, I won't ever._

_AN: This chapter is from the point of view of James Potter. He, Sirius and Peter have not yet managed a transformation so do not yet go by their nicknames. I have tried to make James seem quite rash and Remus more understanding. I hope this works._

**Chapter Four: Hogwarts**

"Hi James, how was summer?" asked Peter. He, Remus and I had all just found each other on the platform. I couldn't see Sirius at all, which was annoying because he was the only one of my friends that I hadn't heard from all summer. I was actually quite worried about him, because we would normally write to one another during the holidays – I guessed his parents had been watching his owls.

"Good. What about yours?" I asked.

"Brilliant. My parents took me camping in France." Peter then rambled on about all the details of his holiday. I wasn't really listening as I was too busy looking for Sirius.

Eventually, I spotted him standing by his family, his arms crossed and facing the opposite direction to them. Behind him was his brother, Regulus, who was chatting to a girl his own age with light-blonde hair. I was pretty sure it was that girl again: the one that changed into Lily.

I walked over to where they were standing, dragging Remus along behind me. Peter followed behind us too. Sirius looked rather miffed when I walked straight past him and stood in front of the girl.

"What are you doing?" whispered Remus.

"She's the one who pranked us last year. I want to know how," I whispered back.

"Hi, what's your name?" I asked the girl.

Sirius turned around and stared at me, confused as to what I was doing. "I thought you were obsessed with Lily, James," he said.

"Later," I told him, before turning back to the girl. However, instead of telling me her name, she appeared to be rather angry with me.

"What do you want, Potter?" she said through gritted teeth. She looked more pissed off with me than Lily had when I'd levitated Snivellus over the lake. I had no idea what I'd apparently done: apart from when I'd thought she was Lily, I'd never even spoken to her.

"What did I do?" I asked. Sirius shrugged, Remus shook his head, and Peter didn't say anything. The girl continued to glare at me. "I've never said a word to you!"

"Not to me personally, but you don't have any respect for my friends, so I don't like you," she said, looking at Regulus, who was still standing next to her.

"Becks, you don't have to be mad at him because of someth…" began Regulus, speaking for the first time since we'd arrived.

"Yes I do! Can't you see how unfair he's being? He was horrible to you at that party!" she almost screeched. I didn't recall saying anything particularly horrible to anyone at that after-party. Regulus just shrugged.

"What party?" asked Sirius. "When did you and him go to a party together and not tell me?"

"Oh it was And-" I started, but the girl's hand was already over my mouth.

"Don't you dare say anything in front of _them,_" she threatened, glancing behind her at Sirius's parents. Merlin, this girl was way scarier than Lily, but I guessed she had a point. Obviously she didn't want them to know about Andromeda's wedding party, or that she and Regulus had attended it. "Anyway, what did you come here to talk about_, Potter_?"

I wasn't really sure if I wanted to continue this conversation, as it was obvious from the way she said my name that she hated me. "Can we talk about this elsewhere?" I asked.

"If you can't say it then don't say it at all."

"Fine! How and why did you turn into me?" I asked.

"Why the hell should I tell you?" she spat.

"Polyjuice potion," Regulus answered for her.

"Isn't that a _sixth year_ potion?" asked Remus. "How did a first year make_ that_?"

"_I_ didn't," she said. "He did, though," she added, pointing at Regulus.

"Why?" asked Sirius. I wasn't sure if he was genuinely curious, or angry with his brother for being so deceitful.

"It was the only way we could think of to allow him to play Quidditch with you! If you lot weren't such arrogant toe-rags he wouldn't have had to. I hate you James Potter! And you Sirius Black!" she shouted. With that, she stomped down the platform, pulling Regulus with her.

Sirius was staring after them with a facial expression somewhat resembling a goldfish. I picked up his trunk for him, as he obviously wasn't going to, and made my way over to the Hogwarts Express. When all four of us had boarded the train and found a compartment, Sirius was the first to speak.

"I can't believe he did that."

"Did what?" I asked. As far as I was concerned, the less Sirius had to do with his brother the better.

"Risked everything just to play quidditch with me," continued Sirius.

"What do you mean?" asked Peter. I was actually wondering the same thing – from what angle was Sirius coming from.

"Well it isn't exactly school rules is it? I mean the kid practically broke every school rule in the book, just to be accepted," explained Remus.

"So you mean Regulus wanted to be with Sirius, and felt the need to pretend to be me?" I asked.

"Well, neither of you have exactly been understanding, have you? How many times has he tried to talk to you, only to have you shout in his face, Sirius?"

Sirius was doing his impression of a fish again.

"Athena," he muttered.

"What?"

"My father's owl."

"Explain."

"Every time I got letters there were always two owls. We never opened the letters from Athena because she kept attacking us, remember? I bet she was carrying letters from Regulus," said Sirius. "Oh god, I feel so stupid!" he cried, putting his head in his hands.

"Sirius, you couldn't have known," I told him. I put an arm on his shoulder in an attempt to comfort him.

"But I ignored him for three years, James. Three years! He must hate me by now!"

"Sirius, calm down. If he went that far just to talk to you, I don't think he's given up hope just yet. Remember that letter that got Lily mad at you? I bet that was him trying to talk to you," said Remus. "Did he attempt to talk to you during the summer?"

"Yeah. He tried to get me to go to his stupid friend's house with him – said it was important. I don't know what happened, but Mother and Father were furious when he got back."

"Wasn't the 5th of August was it?" I asked.

"Yeah, why?"

"That was the day of your cousin's wedding. He was there, with that girl, and he said he was the first person Andromeda told about her baby," I told him.

"What?" shouted Sirius.

…..

_Ok, thanks for reading. Sorry that was almost entirely speech – I wasn't sure how to flesh it out without making it too predictable. Anyway, so now Sirius knows some of the truth about Regulus. How will this affect the story?_

_Please don't hesitate to tell me what you think. I would like your opinions on what points of view to do, as well as on what you think of my characters. I have a poll on my profile page, so you can vote for which of my 'own characters' you like best._

_I am also thinking of writing another story (nothing to do with this), about the marauders' friendship, and what happens to it when Remus accidently bites Regulus. Tell me what you think. It will be T rated for the werewolf scene at the start, which is the scariest part of the whole thing. _

_Please review._


	5. Chapter 5

_Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter._

_AN: Thanks for reading and reviewing this story so far. We are now back to Regulus's point of view._

**Chapter Five: Sorry**

I felt excited as the Hogwarts Express left the station. I sat in a compartment between my friends Robert and Stephannie, with my other friends, Becky and Macmillan, sitting opposite us. Becky seemed to have forgotten all feelings of hatred towards James Potter, and was now questioning Robert about Nicola Ravenclaw (a girl in our year). So far, Robert had admitted to thinking she was "pretty" and that he "liked her". His face then flushed a deep shade of red.

Suddenly, our compartment door slid open to reveal my brother: just Sirius on his own – no James, Remus or Peter were with him. Becky looked ready to kill him, but I put my hand over her mouth before she could say anything. Sirius hadn't done anything yet.

"Reg, can I have a word?" he asked.

"Yeah, sure," I replied. I was surprised at how civil he was being.

"On your own, if possible."

"Ok, let's go outside," I told him, and walked into the corridor part of the train. It wasn't exactly private, but it was out of the hearing range of my friends, whom I guessed Sirius didn't want to talk to me in front of. "What did you want to talk about?" I asked.

"Letters and things. Did you write to me in when I started Hogwarts?" he asked. If I had been expecting any kind of answer at all, it wasn't this. Why was Sirius bringing this up now? And why did he need to ask? Surely he would have known I was writing to him, when he received the letter. Then I had a thought: what if none of the letters I had sent had ever reached him?

"Of course I did Siri. We promised each other. It was you who didn't!" I said. Sirius looked confused, so I continued talking. "When you didn't write, I thought you'd been hurt at first, and then Andromeda told me about what Rosier did in your flying lesson. Then, when after a few weeks, you still didn't write I thought maybe it was because you were having fun at Hogwarts. I still wrote though. I even wrote one to James asking if you could stay with him because it was so horrible at home."

"I'm sorry. I never realised. The only letters I remember were from Mother."

"I bet they were awful weren't they?" I said. The letter she had sent me after my own sorting was pretty horrific, and I'd been sorted into the correct house! I shuddered to think what Sirius's letters would have been like.

"Yeah, they were," said Sirius.

"I thought so. If they were anything like I think they were, you don't have to be sorry for not writing. Couldn't you have just written to say thank you for the Christmas presents? It took me ages to choose them."

"So you sent me the book on Animagi?" Sirius asked.

"Yeah, it had a picture of Sirius II in it, so I thought you would like it. I know you don't read much, but Bella made me go and do Christmas shopping with her in that horrible bookshop – you know the one in Knockturn Alley?" I said.

I hated that shop now, even more than I had when I was nine. Last year, Cissy had decided to _rescue_ me after a particularly awful telling off from Mother, and pulled me into the floo network. We'd both landed in the bookshop (with me coughing and spluttering), only to find the corpse of the bookshop owner on the floor. After the initial panic, the two of us had gone in search of somewhere to stay and ran into Robert's Dad, who had taken us in for the night. Of course, Sirius didn't know any of this.

"Is that the bookshop where James's Dad found a corpse and an almost dead kid last Easter?" asked Sirius.

"What are you talking about, Siri?" I asked.

I was honestly confused: it had been Easter when Cissy and I had run away, and the dead body was obviously that of the bookshop owner. However surely if there had been a body of a child there too, either me or Cissy would have seen it? Maybe they hadn't been there when we'd arrived. Or maybe I had been trying too hard to look after my cousin to notice the bigger picture.

After all, I'd seen Bellatrix murder almost an entire family that night, though I was sure that they were definitely dead. Bella almost never let a job go half done.

"When I was staying at Remus's house, James wrote to tell me his Dad had been called out to fight with Death Eaters. He said his Dad was away the whole night because of the fighting, and because he had to take a child about my age to St Mungo's afterwards," explained Sirius.

"Was it someone we know?"

"I don't know. All James got out of his Dad was that they'd been under the Cruciatus Curse and some other rather nasty curses," said Sirius.

"Oh," I said. It was disgusting how the Death Eaters thought they could get away with doing such horrible things.

"Anyway," said Sirius, changing the subject, "what was with all that glass and slush you sent me?"

"Snow globe," I said sadly. "It had two boys playing quidditch in it and I thought they looked like us."

"I'm sorry. I didn't realise. I thought it was just something to get back at me for being sorted into the wrong house," said Sirius, giving me a small and un-Sirius-like hug.

"Siri, how many times do I have to tell you that I don't care about houses?" I said, laughing, and returning the hug.

"So are we brothers again, Reg?" he asked.

"Siri, I'll always be your brother – even if you hate me," I told him.

…..

As I sat at Slytherin table that evening, not even the talk of "ridding the world of mudbloods and blood traitors" from surrounding Slytherins (mainly from Lucius Malfoy and his so-called 'best mate'), could dampen my mood.

Sirius had been nice to me. He hadn't shouted at me at all, and, even better, he had let me ride on the thestral-pulled carriages with him. We had also had a long conversation about Nymphadora and Andromeda. When Sirius's other friends had joined us, James had started a conversation about Quidditch that I had joined in with. Then, after we had disembarked from the carriage and gone inside, he had said goodbye before running off to Gryffindor table.

I'd then walked over to my own house table to sit by Marcus, Cissy and Thalia. The three of them were now all third-years and so were an entire year ahead of me. However, they were the only people in Slytherin who talked me for reasons other than their own gain, and who didn't call Sirius a blood traitor every five minutes. Marcus was a genuine friend; Cissy was my cousin and a friend since my birth; and Thalia was probably only sitting near me because she was best friends with the other two.

"Reggie, wake up! I'm trying to talk to you!" Marcus half shouted, as he waved his hands in front of his face.

"Give him a break; he's trying to eat," said Cissy calmly.

"But I have to ask him if he wants to join us on our adventure!"

"I don't see why. It's completely idiotic, like all your ideas are," said Cissy.

"Yeah, but how many times have any of them not worked? Face it Cissy, your just being boring," said Marcus. It was true. Whereas most of Marcus's plans were daft, dangerous, and often completely random, they had never failed to bring about their intended result, whether it was a prank, revenge, or just a means to an end. Most of the time, Cissy would be as cynical as it was possible to be.

"So what's it this time?" I asked.

"Well," he began, launching into a detailed account of everything that had happened during the holiday. "I decided that, since my Herbology grade was lower than everything else, I should start reading up on the subject. I found this really interesting book…"

"Just cut to the important bit."

"Basically, I discovered that there's a really interesting plant called gillyweed that allows one to breathe under the water. I thought we could all go down to the lake and see if it works."

"Um, I'm not sure. I'll think about it," I said. The truth was that I didn't really want to mess with Herbology, which was my worst subject. I had suspicions that my lack of talent for the subject had something to do with Mulciber, but even without him as a partner, I wasn't very good at it. I had a small theory that ever since my first awful lesson, and fourth lesson of the subject (involving untimely pulling of a mandrake and the explosion of devil's snare and half the greenhouse where I had been paired Mulciber), all plants now hated me, and worked together to make sure I never succeeded in lessons. I didn't want to test that theory and end up drowning.

…..

That night, as I got changed for bed, I ended up listening to the rather odd conversation the other dormitory members were having. It wasn't exactly nice, but the words "mudblood" and "scum" weren't mentioned, so I didn't feel the need to intervene.

"I don't see why everyone thinks the curse is so bad," said Evan. "My brother says it feels like the best thing in the world, so how can it be wrong?"

"But they must be called unforgiveable curses for a reason," said Barty.

"Yes, but what? My brother does it all the time to my other brother – it's dead funny!" said Evan, giggling.

I hadn't a clue what Evan thought was so funny: from what I knew about unforgivable curses, all they did was cause pain and possibly death. I hoped Evan hadn't seen the full scope of what the curses could do. If he had, and still thought it was funny, then I wasn't sure what I'd do.

"What happened?" asked Mulciber.

"Well first of all my brother pointed his wand at him and said the spell," began Evan.

"Then what happened?"

"My other brother went into the larder and came out with a raw onion and some eggs, and ate them one after the other. Then when the spell was taken off, he just stared confused not knowing what was going on," said Evan.

"That doesn't sound very funny," I interjected.

"Shut up, Black, I wasn't talking to you," snapped Evan. "Anyway, I haven't even got to the interesting part yet."

"I bet it isn't interesting in the slightest," I said.

"I said shut up!" he shouted, before continuing to tell everyone the rest of the story. It involved quite a lot of sick, which happened to be projectile vomited all over Evan's father. It sounded absolutely revolting, and maybe would have been funny in retrospect if Evan hadn't been talking about his own brother being subjected to unforgiveable curses. The next story involved Evan's middle brother being charmed to say loads of idiotic things at his own Birthday Party.

After Evans enlightening tales, I was then subjected to the horrors of Barty's summer. For about the millionth time since coming to Hogwarts I wished I had been sorted into Ravenclaw. After all, father wouldn't have minded too much (if Mother hadn't killed me before he found out), and listening to Gilderoy Lockhart couldn't have been much worse than listening to Barty Crouch.

…..

_AN: Ok, that was longer than expected. I put three ideas in together, because I didn't really know what chapters it would be best to put them in. This chapter cross referenced Chapters 17-19, 25, and 44 of 'Not What You Think', as well as 'First Time'. I recommend you read the former if you haven't already, but the latter is quite dark, so reading it isn't necessary. In case you didn't know, in this story Regulus shares a dormitory with Barty Crouch, Evan Rosier, Avery, and Mulciber._

_Thanks again for reading and please review._


	6. Chapter 6

_Disclaimer: I don't own the Harry Potter books._

_AN: Thanks for everyone who reviewed, especially BlackWolf2013._

**Chapter Six: Falling Out**

Luckily for me, Evan and Barty had decided to shut up at about 10:00pm, so I had had over nine hours sleep. Unfortunately, at around seven thirty, my peaceful slumber was rudely interrupted.

"Time to get up Regulus!" someone shouted into my ear. I felt someone tugging my arm, and the next thing I knew, I was on the floor being dragged towards the door.

"All right! I'm up now! Can you let me get dressed, please?" I shouted at Mulciber, who was still pulling me by the arm. I was surprised he hadn't dislocated my shoulder yet.

Mulciber dropped me, and the other three laughed.

"You can hardly say you're 'up' when you're lying on the floor," giggled Evan.

"Well at least he's awake now," said Mulciber, grinning back at Evan. "Hurry up and get dressed before we're late for breakfast, Regulus."

I quickly changed out of my pyjamas and into my Hogwarts robes. Doing so, I caught a glimpse of my legs, which were now covered in scratches and splinters from being pulled across the floor. I had a feeling my back and shoulders would look similar if I was to look in a mirror. I decided to deal with it later and to just ignore the stinging.

As I was changing, Avery was stretching himself out on his bed and gazing into space; Mulciber was cleaning his teeth; Evan was practising what looked like 'cutting curses' on a spider; and Barty was attempting to comb his hair. Though Evan and Barty were both blonde-haired, Evan's hair was naturally shiny, smooth and slightly wavy, whereas Barty's resembled a pile of straw every morning.

As soon as I was dressed to look like what Father would call a "respectable pureblood", I was dragged out of the dormitory, and towards the great hall. For the whole way, Evan pointed his wand at my neck to prevent me from "escaping". Apparently last year my choice of friends had been "unacceptable" (meaning Hufflepuffs), and Evan felt it was his "duty" to teach me to behave "properly".

So that was how I found myself having breakfast with the four of them. I ended up sitting next to Evan, who was busy making a smiley face with his breakfast, and Barty, who was buttering a mountain of toast. Meanwhile Mulciber was busy telling everyone who'd listen about his latest love interest.

"Do you think Grace likes me?" he asked for the third time, after telling us all how 'pretty' she was. Personally, I thought she was ugly as hell: I didn't say so in case I got cursed.

"Bro, I think you might need a pair of glasses," commented his older brother as he passed by with his friend Rosier. "She looks like a blast-ended skrewt."

"Yeah, I'd rather make out with a bloody Gryffindork than her," said Rosier.

"Really?" asked the elder Mulciber.

"Nah!" said Rosier. The three of then moved on to sit further down the table.

Soon, owls came swooping into the Great Hall. One dropped a letter onto my newly buttered, jam-covered toast. I picked the sticky envelope up by the corner and attempted to open it without making my fingers all sticky. It was quite hard, but I managed to make very little mess.

"Aw look, little Regulus has got a letter!" cooed Barty in a stupid voice. I didn't mention that Evan was younger than me, and had received letters from his "Mummy" every single day last year. I noticed that he too had a letter this morning.

"Ooh, let's see," said Evan, putting down his own letter and seizing the envelope from me. "Uh, disgusting!" he shouted, wiping his sticky hands all over Mulciber's robes. Mulciber didn't look happy but didn't seem to want to comment – Evan was the leader of their group and upsetting him meant you were on your own. Once he had opened it, Evan began to read the letter out loud in a stupid, high-pitched voice:

"_Dear Reggie," _he began. He and Barty laughed at my nickname. "_I hope you are having a good time at Hogwarts. Sirius wrote to me last night to tell me you two were friends again. I'm so happy for you. As for me, everything is going well at home: Nymphadora laughed for the first time ever, and can nearly sit up on her own. _Who in Merlin's name is Nymphadora?"

"My cousin's daughter," I said simply.

Evan Rosier looked confused for a moment before realisation hit his face. "You're writing to _her_? Are you mental? I know what your Mother's like – she'd _kill_ you if she found out!" I must have looked surprised at his outburst because he then added: "Not that I'd care, of course, but still: she's a blood-traitor Regulus! She married a muggle! Does that not mean anything to you?"

"Not really," I said, shrugging. It didn't really make any difference to me who my cousin chose to fall in love with.

"You're hopeless, Regulus," sighed Evan.

"What _are_ you on about?" I asked. Usually, all he ever did was shout at me, complain about me, hurt me, and steal my stuff.

"You! You just don't get it do you? All you ever do is cry about how Sirius doesn't like you anymore. He's a blood traitor Gryffindor, Regulus - it shouldn't matter about whether he likes you! Why can't you just behave like a proper pureblood?" he said.

"What? Killing people just because they're different! No thanks. And for your information, Sirius likes me anyway!" I said.

"I don't kill people! And so what if Sirius does like you? What does it matter?" shouted Evan.

"It matters because he's my brother. Just because you don't know what it's like to be at war with your brother-"

"You don't know anything about brothers! It's not like yours wants to be a Death Eater! I bet Sirius doesn't even know what an 'unforgiveable curse' even _is_!"

"I thought _you_ wanted to be a Death Eater," I said. Evan seemed to be contradicting himself: one minute he was calling Sirius and Andromeda blood traitors for talking to muggles and muggleborns, and the next he was complaining that his own brother wanted to kill them. Did he hate muggles or not?

"No. Why the hell I would I want to become a murderer?" he shouted. Then he whispered to me: "Death Eaters don't just kill muggles, Regulus. They kill and torture half-bloods, purebloods, and anyone else who gets in their way. They also use unforgiveable curses on just about anyone."

"I thought you liked 'unforgivables'," I whispered back.

"No. I hate them just as much as you do. I just thought that if I made jokes about them, that they wouldn't seem quite so bad. Don't tell Barty I said that though."

"Have you ever seen any apart from 'Imperio'," I asked.

"No, but I've seen the effect 'Crucio' has afterwards."

…..

Five minutes later, I had nearly finished my toast. I had spread out the letter on the table so that I could read the rest of it. It mentioned someone called Molly Weasley, who had a child the same age as Nymphadora. I presumed Molly was married or related to Arthur.

I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned around to see Cissy.

"Hi, Reg. Ooh, you've got a letter. Can I see?" she asked. Before I could stop her, she had grabbed hold of the letter and was reading it. I watched her smile disappear and turn into a scowl.

"Why is _she_ writing to you?" she asked, deadly serious.

"Same reason Bella does. Because she's my cousin, and we hardly see each other anymore," I said. To be fair, Bella hardly wrote to me anymore, and I didn't really like the letters she sent. They were always about Death Eaters, and Rodolphus. One letter had included some rather unnecessary, graphic details about Rodolphus that I hadn't particularly wished to know about.

"But Andromeda's not our family any more, Reg. She abandoned us, remember?"

"She's still your sister," I said. If I could get over Sirius being in Gryffindor, Cissy should be able to forgive her sister.

"No she's not, and you shouldn't write to her."

"Cissy, I'm not going to hate her just because you say I should," I said.

"But she married a muggle, Reg! She betrayed us, and by writing to her, you're betraying us too! You promised you wouldn't!"

"I never said I wouldn't write to her anymore! All I said was that I wouldn't do what she did, Cissy!"

"You're still breaking your word. You're as bad as Sirius is!" she shouted.

"Cissy, you're over reacting," I said.

"No I'm not! First I lost Sirius, then Bella, then Andromeda, and now this! I hate you, Regulus!" shouted Cissy. She ran off, leaving me staring at an empty space where she had been.

…..

_AN: Thanks for reading. A lot of the characters in this have messed up or confused feelings so a lot of the things they say may seem a little odd. I also did a little research into the Death Eaters on Harry Potter wiki. It tells of some of the original Death Eaters who went to school with Tom Riddle, one of which may or not be Evan Rosier's father. There is also one called Nott, the father of Nott in Harry's year. Do you think it is possible there would have been any of this family at Hogwarts between Tom Riddle and Harry Potter's time? I almost used the name in this chapter. So far the boys in fourth year Slytherin are Mulciber, Rosier and Snape. Parkinson, Crabbe and Goyle are in fifth year, and sixth year has another Rosier and Malfoy. The Carrows are both in their seventh year, and Rabastan has left for good. Any ideas of who could be in first year?_

_Next Chapter is quidditch tryouts. I will probably end up with almost an entire quidditch team made up of potential Death Eaters, but if you have any ideas, please tell me what you think. Regulus is trying out for seeker. In this chapter, one character will be badly hurt during Quidditch, and Narcissa will have at least one other fall out with friends. Also, some characters may be getting a little bit wet. I am not telling you who - you will have to either guess or wait it out._

_Please review._


	7. Chapter 7

_Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter._

_**This is part one and two put together.**_

_AN: In the prequel to this, Regulus has loads of nightmares, and his peers take the mick out of him for it. The first part of this is supposed to show how they react to someone else screaming in the night. The rest is mostly Quidditch as promised. _

**Chapter Seven: Quidditch**

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh! Someone help m- Aaaaaaarggh!"

It was 2:00 in the morning on the day of the quidditch try-outs, when I was woken by a loud, fairly high-pitched scream. Last year it had been me that had woken up everyone else. However, I hadn't screamed in my sleep for months! And I was positive that it hadn't been me this time.

"Shut it Regulus! I'm trying to sleep," hissed Barty from across the room.

"It wasn't me!" I whispered back.

"Sure it wasn't," he muttered.

The scream rang out again. Barty Crouch watched me the whole time, and was just able to work out that the sound wasn't coming from me. Avery and Mulciber were both fast asleep still, whilst Evan was sitting bolt upright, pale and shaking on the bed. If it hadn't been for the fact that he hadn't opened his mouth the whole time and had once told me that "nightmares were stupid and babyish and not to be screamed at"; I would have thought it was him.

"Are you alright, Ev?" Barty asked.

"Of c-course I'm alr-right! I j-just h-hate w-waking up at 2:00am!"

"Are you sure you're Ok?" I asked. Evan nodded, but he didn't sound okay – in fact he sounded the exact opposite of okay. He looked absolutely terrified of something, but it wasn't him that had been screaming: whoever it was was still making a lot of noise.

Seeing that his best friend was in no mood for talking, Barty pulled his blanket over his head and started yelling for whoever it was to shut up. When this had no effect, he grabbed hold of his green silk-covered pillow, and held it against his ears with both hands. I was left staring at Evan, who was still shaking and was as white as a sheet.

"Wusgoingon. Is that you, Reg?" asked Avery, rubbing both eyes with the back of his hands. I was surprised he was awake. Usually he slept through any amount of racket, and a good poke was needed to get him to wake up in the mornings.

"For once it actually isn't," I told him.

"Who the bloody hell is it then?"

"I don't know. It could be anyone: Cissy, Marcus, Lucius Malfoy…" I began listing various people in Slytherin.

"I doubt it's Lucius Malfoy, Regulus. Why doesn't one of us go and check to see what's going on?" suggested Avery.

"I'll go," said Evan. He swung his legs out of bed and pulled yesterday's jumper over his pyjamas.

"I'll go too," I said. Whoever was screaming needed help, and Evan didn't really look like the best person to give it to them. For one thing, in his normal state, Evan didn't understand the meaning of sympathy, and would be a terrible choice if someone wanted comfort. On the other hand, if someone was actually hurt or in trouble it might need more than one person to actually help them.

Evan turned and glared at me, all signs of previous fear leaving his body. "No, Regulus!"

"What if it's Cissy? She's my cousin. What if she's hurt?"

"Trust me. It isn't Cissy. This has nothing to do with you, Regulus, or you, Avery." With that, he marched out of the room slamming the door behind him. Ten minutes later, all sounds of screaming stopped, but Evan did not come back.

…..

When I woke up the next morning Evan was still missing. No one seemed in the least bit concerned except Mulciber, who was whining on and on about Quidditch.

"But where is he? We need to be at the pitch in ten minutes!" he complained. Out of the four of us that remained he had the least excuse to be impatient. He was the only one who had managed to get a decent night's sleep. The rest of us were bleary-eyed, irritable and still half asleep.

"He's probably gone off with his brothers. They're both on the team," I said.

"Oh yeah. One of them's team captain now," said Avery.

"Are they? Which one?" I asked. I didn't particularly like either of them, but the sixth-year Rosier was a lot nastier, and knew a lot more about Dark Arts, than the fourth-year one. Crossing either of them without knowing how to cast a shield charm perfectly wasn't a good idea and, if you were a first-year, a lone encounter with the elder one may well have been the death of you if someone did not come to your immediate rescue. I didn't like the idea of either of them being in a position of authority.

"The older one, idiot – they wouldn't make a fourth-year Quidditch Captain would they?" sneered Mulciber.

He then went on to discuss how much he hated him, and how he and his brother had been bossed about and used as 'target practise' every time they had visited the Rosiers' house – I wasn't sure whether the practise was for quidditch or for cursing. From the description it sounded as if the elder Rosier was worse at home than at Hogwarts where he was under the watchful eye of the teachers. Avery and I listened – at least Avery looked as if he were listening – to the rant, as we walked across the grounds to the Quidditch pitch. (Barty Crouch had decided he would rather sleep in bed for a few extra hours than come with us, saying the chances of us getting on the team this year were slim.)

As predicted, Evan was already on the Quidditch pitch, standing next to the younger of his two brothers, and Mulciber's brother. The two fourth-years were deep in conversation, but quickly shut up when they saw the three of us coming. Their manner would have been more suspicious if I hadn't already caught the words "chaser", "Holy-head Harpies", "hot", "stunning" and a whole lot of less appropriate adjectives all thrown into the same sentence.

Evan scowled at me and then at Avery, indicating he didn't want us there. I could understand this because Evan did not like me, and people usually did not want people they didn't like to stare at them when they had dark rings around their eyes and looked as if they were about to collapse from exhaustion. He had the look of one who had spent the night in the forbidden forest, though I couldn't imagine why – it seemed like an extremely un-Rosier-ish thing to do.

Five minutes later I was standing next to Avery near the front of a group of about thirty people. At the head of the group was the Quidditch Captain, who was brandishing a beaters' bat and waiting rather impatiently for everyone to quieten. He looked ready to hit someone. Not for the first time, I wished I had been sorted into Ravenclaw and had a kind, understanding Captain like Andrew Corner, who was now not only Quidditch Captain for his own house, but also head boy.

The Slytherin Quidditch Captain, however, was so self-important that he didn't even bother with a formal introduction. He was, after all, the heir to one of the most high-standing, pureblood families, and if one didn't know who he was, then they weren't worth talking to. As it turned out, this was actually quite a good thing because it meant I didn't have to listen to him for very long. Instead, we were quickly divided into groups according to what position we played.

I was trying out for seeker. When I had written a letter a couple of days ago, it had been the position that Andromeda had recommended that I tried out for: I was small, light, and good at diving, which were all good traits for a seeker. My cousin had said that I would be brilliant at it and would make an excellent quidditch player. I believed her, since apart from Becky she was the only person that had ever seen me play as myself. Well actually Sirius had played with me, but only when I had pretended to be James. All he had seen me play was chaser and keeper, and he had said I was rubbish at playing keeper.

The other Slytherins going for the seeker position were an awful lot larger than I was. The smallest of them was a broad-shouldered fifth year named Parkinson, who was about a head taller than my brother Sirius was. The other two, Nott and Flint, were both sixth years and therefore were on rather better terms with the captain than I was. Together we watched the other players try out, and after an hour or two, the number of players had dwindled to 14, which was exactly double the amount needed. The only seeker left other than me was Flint, who, to be honest, would probably have made a much better beater or chaser than seeker. However, as he had said so himself, he had little chance of making either of those positions since the other players were also really good – one of them was his older brother. He also said that he could easily beat a "little runt like me" any time.

We were then sorted out into two teams and told to get into position to play a game. The teams were anything but fair: my team consisted of me as seeker, Evan and both Mulciber brothers as chasers, Avery as keeper, and a third year girl and one of Evan's brothers as beaters. None of us were above fourth year, and the only ones that had been on the team last year were Mulciber and Rosier. The other team was made up of fifth, sixth and seventh years, including the Quidditch Captain. If that wasn't enough bias, the match was being refereed by Malfoy, who was a sixth year and friends with most of the people on the other team.

"Ok everyone. My brother's going to be judging on us on how we play this, not on whether we win or not, though I think we stand a chance at winning this. We have quite good chasers and I have absolutely no idea about you two. Regulus looks quite small but then I think seekers are supposed to be small," began Evan's brother. As he got further into his attempt at a pep-talk I started to understand why they never made fourteen-year-olds team Captain. The speech was going nowhere, he looked, if possible, more exhausted than Evan did, and he didn't seem to have any idea about team tactics. He also wasn't doing much good at keeping our spirits up. "Overall, I think the best idea is if Regulus catches the snitch as soon as possible, and we keep as far away from my older brother as possible."

When the game started, I flew high above the other players to get a better vantage point. From there I could both watch what was going on, and keep an eye out for the snitch. I was also quite far out of range of the beaters and bludgers that were flying around below.

I watched as Evan took possession of the Quaffle and passed it to one of the Mulcibers (it was hard to tell which one from 100ft in the air). It then passed to the other Mulciber and then back to Evan who threw it through the hoop, scoring our team the first point. The Quaffle then passed from the keeper to Flint's brother to someone I didn't know, was intercepted by Mulciber, and passed to Evan who then scored again.

I couldn't see the snitch anywhere and, as far as I could tell, neither had the other seeker. The quaffle was by now in the hands of the other team and was heading towards Avery. Avery didn't look as if he was going to catch it, and was in fact going towards the other goalpost. For a moment I thought the other team would score, but then there was a loud smack, as a bludger slammed into the quaffle and knocked it straight into Evan, who caught it and grinned back at his brother. The bludger itself did not do anyone any harm, except for preventing the other team from scoring.

Ten minutes later and the score was 50-20 to our team. By now the other seeker had taken it upon him – probably out of boredom – to follow me around the pitch. It was extremely annoying, but also meant that I couldn't remain still in case he caught up with me and decided to actually talk to me. I was pretty sure any conversation with him would be better described as taunting or bullying, so I decided to shake him off.

I flew as fast as I could to the other side of the pitch. He still followed me, probably thinking I had seen the snitch, so I did it again but this time went into a steep dive. I flew deliberately close to the other team's keeper's ear, causing him to completely miss the Quaffle, and causing the other seeker to crash into him. The keeper was then left hanging off the edge of his broom by one hand, while the two of us sped at 120mph towards the quidditch pitch. About a yard before I hit the ground, I pulled out of the dive and started to make way back up again. The other seeker was not so lucky: The end of his broom hit the grass as he tried to pull it level with mine. The handle split down the middle, and the boy fell off looking extremely confused about what had just happened. As I flew up to my previous position I heard cheering and turned around to see that my brother was in the Quidditch stands and cheering at me. I waved at him before resuming my search for the golden snitch.

It wasn't long after this than I spotted the snitch. It was hovering dangerously close to the end of the Quidditch Captain's beaters' bat, which was not somewhere I particularly wished to go. I made sure I was behind him, before attempting to get it. Fortunately for me (though maybe not for anyone else), I wasn't' the only one that had spotted it. The other Rosier beater had spotted it, nodded in my direction and decided to fly annoyingly close to me. The idea was probably to stop me getting hurt.

However, the older of the two brothers was oblivious to the snitch that was now fluttering next to his elbow. He was more concerned as to why his brother had stopped his "ridiculous strategy of hitting the quaffle instead of the players" and why he had flown so far from the other players in the first place. The argument that ensued was enough for me to allow me grab the snitch, and fly off to show it to Sirius.

"Wow! Why didn't you tell me you were such a damn good flyer? That dive was amazing!" said Sirius, giving me a brief hug. By now, most of the players had realised the game had ended and were on the ground; the other seeker was trying desperately to cast "reparo" on his broken broomstick. The only two that remained in the air were Evan's brothers, who were still yelling at each other at the tops of their voices.

"I wanted it to be a surprise," I said. "I'm glad we're not fighting anymore," I added, glancing back towards the quidditch pitch.

"Yeah, me too," said Sirius.

"Do you think I'll get on the team?" I asked.

"Are you joking? Rosier would have to be mad not to let you on the team!" said Sirius.

"I'm pretty sure he _is_ mad, though," I said, just as the fore mentioned Captain aimed a bludger right into his brother's chest. The boy toppled off his broom and fell forty feet towards the ground, almost falling on top of Evan, who was trying desperately to catch him. As it was, he landed in a crumpled heap on the ground, unmoving.

"I see what you mean," said Sirius, as I flew back to the quidditch pitch. At that moment I was more pleased than ever that Sirius and I were no longer enemies.

…..

By the time I got back to the Quidditch pitch, Mulciber and Avery were already running towards the castle. The Quidditch Captain was now laughing his head off with the other sixth-years: Evan was looking back and forth between his brothers with a look of utter shock on his face.

"What in Merlin's name did you do that for!" Mulciber's brother shouted at the Quidditch Captain, whilst leaning over to make sure his best friend was still alive. He grabbed hold of Rosier's wrist, squeezing it to find a pulse – it was quite pointless really, because I could tell from three metres away that Rosier was still breathing.

"He was annoying me," stated the Quidditch Captain. Mulciber and Evan were now glaring daggers at him. "Oh for God's sake, get off the floor!" he shouted, kicking his brother round the head.

The boy's eyelids fluttered, and he whimpered slightly before attempting to get up. Evan rushed to his side to support him.

"Why are you being like this?" Evan asked.

"I'm not! He's the one that's acting like a bloody Hufflepuff!"

The two of them argued for what seemed like forever, before Evan finally shouted, "You're a monster, I hate you, and you're not my brother anymore!"

…..

After a lot of fuss, Avery and Mulciber came back with Madame Pomfrey (the new school nurse). The Quidditch Captain told me I'd made it onto the team before shouting at me to get lost. This was how I ended up walking back to Hogwarts with Sirius, who was ecstatic that I'd finally made it onto the team.

"Come on, Reggie," he said dragging me through the entrance hall and up the Grand staircase.

"Where are we going, Siri?" I asked. He was now leading me through passageways I'd never even seen before.

"To tell everyone you're amazing at Quidditch of course!" said Sirius, excitedly. "Unless you want to tell all your friends first."

"No, I'll tell them later," I said. Becky, Stephannie and Macmillan would probably have been as over-excited as Sirius was when I told them, and I was pretty sure the others would be pleased for me too. However, I couldn't talk to Stephannie in public because our friendship was meant to be secret, and I had absolutely no idea where to start looking for anyone else.

Sirius stopped in front of a portrait of a fat lady and muttered the word "Quaffle". The portrait swung open and Sirius hurried me inside. I figured it was either the entrance to Gryffindor tower, or the entrance to yet another secret passage. If it were Gryffindor tower, it would make sense because this year's head boy had a Quidditch obsession and I'd heard all the passwords were Quidditch related – ours was 'Bludger'.

"Welcome to Gryffindor Common room, Regulus," he said.

I stared around the room I was in. It was bigger than the Slytherin Common room and more like the Ravenclaw one in layout (though lacking in the statue department). There was a raging fire to one side.

"Do you like it, Reggie?" he asked.

"Yeah. It's like a red version of Ravenclaw's," I said. "Why am I here?"

"I want you to meet someone," he said, "and when have you been in Ravenclaw tower?"

"Last year, at Christmas, and when Andy was pregnant," I said.

"Oh," said Sirius. "Anyway, there's someone I'd like you to meet." He led me upstairs and into what I presumed was his own dormitory, where three other boys were sitting on the beds. "This is my brother, Regulus. Reggie, these are my friends James, Remus, and Peter."

"I know, Siri. I've seen them before," I said.

"Oh," said Sirius. "Anyway James, guess what? Regulus did a wronski feint, and he's on the Quidditch team for Slytherin! And he won a match against the sixth-years!"

"You do realise he'll be playing against me don't you, Sirius?" asked James.

"Yes, but he's amazing. You have to come and see!"

Five minutes later I was back on the Quidditch pitch, but this time with Sirius and the rest of the marauders. It was much more fun than playing with the Slytherins, especially as there were no bludgers and nobody got hurt. We played for an hour, before it was time for lunch in the Great Hall.

…..

When I entered the Hall, there was a huge crowd around about the middle of Slytherin table. It was mostly made up of second and third years, with the occasional fourth year. In the centre of the crowd were Narcissa, Thalia and Marcus. Marcus was holding a camera and a pile of rather limp-looking pieces of paper. They appeared to be arguing about something:

"You Marcus! You're supposed to _my_ friend, not his!" shouted Cissy. "And why are you taking his side instead of mine?"

"I'm not taking anyone's side. You're being completely unreasonable," stated Marcus. "And you said yourself that you didn't want to come with us."

"Don't lie. You hate me, and your trying to replace me with my cousin and that filth from Ravenclaw!"

"There's nothing wrong with her!" shouted Marcus.

"Yes there is. She's a half-blood!"

"My Mother's a half-blood!"

"Cissy stop! All Marcus said was that you should have behaved more reasonably to Regulus last week," interjected Thalia.

"Yeah, well he shouldn't have been writing to that stupid blood-traitor, should he? I hate him anyway." I felt tears in my eyes and forced them to stay there. How could my own cousin say something like that about Andromeda and me? Did she even realise what she was saying?

"Cissy! How can you say that when he's your cousin?" said Marcus. "What if he heard you? Oh… he has." He looked directly at me and then glared at Cissy. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," I lied.

"That's alright then. Let's go and look at the photos."

...

_AN: Thanks for reading this. I have made a couple of challenges on 'Harry Potter Fanfiction Challenges'. One is for 'Discovering Fanfiction Challenge' which I thought would be funny, and the other is 'Death Eater Childhood Competition', which is exactly what it says. You have to write a story about the childhood of a death eater, telling how they came to be a death eater._

_Chapter 8 will most likely my one in Lupin's point of view – mostly featuring Sirius, Remus, Peter, and James but also Regulus and Stephannie. _

_Have any of you any suggestions on whose view to do for chapter 12 (I am a little reluctant to simply make my way through each of the marauders in turn)? _


	8. Chapter 8

_Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter._

_AN: Thanks to all of you for reading and reviewing. Sorry this took so long and thanks for reading and following this. I had a writer's block and then I got extremely side tracked. The results of that were 'Am I A Monster', which is a story centred on Remus, Sirius and Regulus. The basic plot is that Remus ends up biting Regulus._

_I said at the beginning that I would continue putting in 'other point of view chapters'. This one is Remus because I said I would write it. I'm really not as confident with his character as I am with the others, so when you've finished this can you please give me some tips. Sorry if this seems off the plot but I want to include things that have been going on with Sirius as well as with Regulus. _

_Regulus's insistence of calling his brother 'Siri' should help you if you can't tell who is speaking._

**Chapter Eight: Animagi**

There was definitely something odd about Sirius's hair as he walked towards me. I reckoned there was something wrong with all of him: his robes were hanging off him in an extremely odd way (especially at the back), and he was grinning like an idiot with a rather odd look in his eye. James and Peter also looked immensely happy about something as they both sat either side of me for breakfast, though Peter looked slightly less enthusiastic than the other two did.

"We have something amazing to show you, Remus!" said James rather too excitedly.

"Yeah, you won't believe what we've done!" said Peter. "Or well, what Sirius has done," he added.

Now I was worried. If Sirius had done something, it was most likely to be a prank against the Slytherins. I seriously hoped he hadn't done anything to Snape again. Last time Sirius and James pranked Snape, Lily had ranted on about it for weeks (after the initial shouting match), and had blanked me out because I hadn't done anything to stop them.

"Don't worry. It's got nothing to do with Slytherins," said Peter, glaring at the Slytherin table. I looked over too.

I noticed that Sirius's little brother was walking towards us, wondering what in Merlin's name he was doing. I'd heard Sirius and Regulus talking a few days ago about keeping the fact that they were friends a secret. Walking openly up to a bunch of Gryffindor fourth years with no wand in sight was not normal behaviour for small Slytherins and wouldn't do anything to hide their relationship. Regulus had a rather smug expression on his face, which looked a lot like Sirius's except for the fact that it looked like he was also trying to hold back laughter. He stopped right behind Sirius's chair and made a show of looking underneath it. Then he burst into fits of giggles.

Wondering what on earth was happening, I also decided to look down. On the floor beneath Sirius (or, rather, dangling from somewhere in Sirius's robes) was something long, black and furry. It looked like a very hairy, black snake.

"Siri, have you been putting that book to inappropriate uses?" asked Regulus, keeping his eyes on the thing under the chair.

"What book?" asked Sirius, not very innocently. Regulus was not impressed.

"You have, haven't you?" he said. When Sirius didn't say anything he continued: "Siri that was a really idiotic thing to do. You could have died!"

Sirius had now lost the smug smile and James was starting to look worried. "Don't you dare tell anyone!"

"Why would I? It's illegal. I don't want you in Azkaban anymore that you want to go there yourself. I know how much you hate dementors," said Regulus.

I'd already figured out that whatever Regulus was upset about and that whatever Sirius had done was absolutely nothing to do with pranking Slytherins. For one thing, it had something to do with the book. The only book I knew Sirius had that Regulus knew about was that book he got in first year about Animagi. And in that case…

Oh… my… Merlin….

The thing under the chair was a tail! It was incredibly obvious and I couldn't understand why I hadn't considered it before – apart from the fact that becoming an animagi was completely illegal and practically impossible for anyone our age! And were those things making Sirius's hair look so odd ears? Yes, they almost certainly were.

"Siri, after breakfast we need to talk. All five of us. In private," Regulus said, before he started walking back towards his own table.

…..

Five minutes later, all four of us and Regulus were squished into a very small alcove just off the corridor where History of Magic was. We didn't even have History of Magic that day (the second year Hufflepuffs and Slytherins did), and we really needed to be heading off to our next lesson. However, since Sirius and James had figured out that Regulus wasn't going to tell the teachers on them, they were both very excited again and Sirius had insisted that we had the conversation now anyway.

As much as I wanted to ask questions, it was clear that I wasn't going to be able to. This was because Regulus simply wouldn't shut up.

"Why did you want to be an animal anyway?" he asked, after Sirius had reassured him that he hadn't based his research on a book from Knockturn Alley.

"Sorry, can't tell you that – marauders' secret," said James. Once I'd worked out what Sirius was doing, I was well aware that James had also been trying. I remembered a rather large pair of antlers last term and Lily yelling at James and Sirius because of it (as well as for an entirely different reason that I was glad had been sorted out).

"Siri?"

"Sorry, Reg. It's not my secret to tell."

"Aww. What can you tell him that you can't tell me?" Regulus whined at Sirius. I could think of quite a few. For example, Sirius, James and Peter had promised that they would never tell anyone about my "furry little problem", as Sirius and James called it. I guessed Sirius wasn't going to break that promise just to prevent Regulus from pestering him.

"Just leave it, Reg. Now do you want to see or not?" said Sirius.

"You can actually transform?" I asked. Surely he couldn't: this was NEWT level stuff or maybe even beyond that!

"Of course! What do you think I was so happy about, Moony?" said Sirius. I then watched as Sirius's body disappeared and was replaced by a large, shaggy, black dog. It looked like one of those year-old dogs that were still puppies but that had almost reached adult size – very much like the teenage Sirius.

"Can you do it too?" I asked James and Peter. Regulus was still staring open-mouthed at Sirius.

"No. The furthest I got were those antlers, and once I grew hooves. Peter hasn't really managed anything yet, and Sirius is absolutely rubbish at transforming back," said James. "It's quite amazing though, don't you think?"

Sirius was tried to run about even though there was far too little space for him to do so without crashing into everyone. Behaving like an over-excitable puppy, he jumped up at Regulus and knocked him over. "Ow! Siri get off me. Stop licking me!"

It was quite funny but it was nearly two minutes to nine and we had to go up to the top floor for our next lesson.

"Shouldn't we be getting to lessons now?" I asked.

"Yes. Sirius come on, change back we don't want to be late for your favourite subject do we?" said James. Our next lesson was actually Divination, which was the least favourite lesson for all of us. I would have hated it anyway simply because it was completely illogical, but the four of us had extra reasons to hate it. Our Divination teacher happened to be very good at making predictions about the future that actually came true. Most of these were bad things: people's deaths, the fate of all our defence teachers, and every single newspaper article that stated that there had been an attack or that someone had gone missing. It was probably the most depressing lesson in existence.

I watched as Sirius changed back. This time the transformation was a lot slower, and started with the feet. The dog Sirius screwed its eyes shut as it grew larger and its legs took up a more human-like shape. Then the body changed and Sirius stood up. Unfortunately he still had a furry, dog-like face.

James started laughing uncontrollably; Peter looked like he was trying to hide his giggles behind his hand; and Regulus just looked extremely worried.

"Shut up. It's not even funny!" snapped Sirius.

"Yes it is," said James.

"No, it's not. How are we going to explain this to everyone, James? And how are we going to change him back?" I asked, rather annoyed at James for never taking anything seriously.

"You lot head to class. I'll take him to the hospital wing – I've only got History of Magic anyway and I can easily catch up on it," suggested Sirius's brother. At least he was being sensible.

"No don't!" cried Sirius. "We can't let anyone know about this!"

"Siri, Madame Pomfrey never asks questions about things. And if she does, I'm pretty sure we can think of something: I've been lying to Father for years about some things, and your one of the best prankers in the whole school!"

"Why don't I take him to the hospital wing instead?" I suggested.

"Because I want to talk to Sirius in private and you need to talk to James and Peter about why they are supposed to be your best friends and they haven't told you about this before," said Regulus. "And because Professor Binns wouldn't notice if I didn't turn up for an entire week."

…..

"So why_ did_ you decide to become animagi?" I asked.

"You mean you haven't guessed! I thought you were supposed to be the clever one," joked James.

"Well you didn't make it very easy to guess what you were doing. I never even knew you were up to something," I said. I'd thought that the antler thing had been a one off: a result of a bad prank they'd carried out while I'd been away for the full moon.

"Animagi are impervious to werewolves," said James, sounding far too much like a textbook to be true.

"We thought that if you couldn't hurt us then we could keep you company when you… you know…" said Peter. "It must be terribly lonely out there on your own."

It was lonely during the parts that I could remember. However most of it was just a distant blur and I couldn't ever remember my time as the wolf. That was the part of it that scared me most. If they were going to turn into animals for me and that turned out not to be true, I wouldn't even know if I had bitten them or not. I could hurt any of them and never know until the next morning.

Then there was the fact that the transformation was so dangerous. Out of the three of them, Sirius was probably the most talented at transfiguration and he'd managed to make a mess of it. I was worried that if James or Peter tried it, they would end up stuck as an animal forever.

"I don't think you should do this," I told them.

"Rubbish. You need to have more faith in us, Moony," said James.

…...

_AN: It says in the books that all that marauders had achieved the transformation by fifth year so I figured they would have made progress by fourth year. I was also going to have a scene where a character storms out of divination but I didn't have enough time to fit it in and I didn't know where or how to slot it in. Any guesses as to who this was? (Clue: they are annoyed that the teacher failed to predict something)._

_Tell me what you think of the plot, characterisation, writing etc._

_What do you think Regulus should tell Madame Pomfrey about Sirius? _

_Please review. _


	9. Chapter 9

_Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter_

_AN: I had a writer's block so I went on the 'Prepare To Be Unstuck' thread on the 'Harry Potter Fanfiction Challenges' forum. I was given the prompts: broken, accusation, taste, family, restless, smirk, purity, fortune, slow, and hospital. I haven't written full chapters on each prompt, but each word is in this chapter, although some are in altered form. Obviously 'hospital' is incredibly easy to spot, but see if you can find the others. I'm pretty sure they are in there._

**Chapter Nine: The Hospital Wing**

Sirius may have been older than me, but being older didn't always mean being more sensible. I couldn't believe how much of an idiot he could be sometimes, and getting himself stuck as a half dog, half human was certainly not one of his brightest ideas. Other than the fact that it was against the rules, I had no idea why on earth Sirius had done it: if the teachers ever found out he might even be expelled for it and then what would happen? Hopefully he'd go to James or Remus's place because Mother_ certainly_ wouldn't be happy with him. As it was, I still had to come up with some decent explanation of what had happened to him.

What made it ten million times worse was that, even though people were still supposed to be in lessons, there were still people hanging around the corridors and staring at us as we walked past. I guessed they were sixth and seventh year students that were on "study periods", but it was still extremely rude and inconsiderate of them to be staring, pointing and laughing at us (though to an outsider, Sirius might have looked quite comical). Whether they meant harm or not, the outcome was that I hated it and wished they would all just go away.

I was thankful when we reached the relative safety of the hospital wing. There was only one other patient in there; unfortunately, of course, it just so happened to be Rosier. He was reading a book but looked up as we came in, a gleeful expression on his face as he spotted Sirius's condition.

"Bloody hell, how did you manage _that_, Sirius?" he sneered. Sirius glared him and I wanted to wipe the smirk off his face then and there – I was sure Sirius felt the same way too. In any case, it was pretty clear that he and Sirius hated one another a lot more than Evan and I did.

"I could say the same to you,_ Rosier. _Shouldn't you be out of here by now?" snarled Sirius. It had been over a week since he'd been admitted to the hospital after the quidditch match but even people with injuries as bad as his had been were usually released after about three days or so. Maybe he'd been more hurt than I'd thought.

I left Sirius to his quarrelling and wandered off to find out where Madam Pomfrey was. I found her in a small side-chamber selecting a bottle marked 'skele-something-or-other' out of the cabinet.

"Excuse me," I started, "it's my brother Sirius, he, uh-" I had no idea what to say. How did one go about saying that their brother made a mess of turning into an animagus without saying that he was trying to turn into an animagus? Instead, I simply pointed – rather unhelpfully - in Sirius's direction.

Madam Pomfrey cut me off with a wave of her hand. She picked up the medicine bottle and hurried over to where I'd left Sirius. She looked extremely shocked when she saw him.

"What on earth have you done to yourself this time, young man?" she exclaimed, bending over to examine him. "I don't know what you and your friends think you're doing."

"I didn't do anything," said Sirius. "It just suddenly happened after we finished breakfast." It wasn't a very good cover story and Madam Pomfrey was never going to buy it.

"Sirius, people don't just sprout fur all over their faces! I can't help unless you tell me what happened," said Pomfrey.

"I'm not lying! I really don't know what happened," Sirius answered. Maybe Sirius was a bad liar or my face was giving it away, but the healer did not believe him. She looked down sternly at him.

"You know, I think he might be telling the truth, actually." Strangely, this comment came from Rosier. Pomfrey turned to look at him, and both Sirius and I gawped incredulously at him: it was common knowledge that Sirius and Rosier had about as much liking for each other as James and Severus did, so why in Merlin's name would he cover up for him? It made no sense and only furthered to my conclusion that Rosier had been hit in the head harder than I'd previously thought.

"And do you have any evidence for this?" Madam Pomfrey asked.

"Well I do know that the sixth years have been making polyjuice potion in class, and I know my brother well enough to know that he'd find it funny to spike Sirius's pumpkin juice with it. I've heard adding animal hairs can produce rather interesting results," he said. It actually wasn't too bad of an idea. I did remember Marcus saying something about the potion only working with human body parts – otherwise it would go horribly wrong. I still found it very strange that Rosier would be trying to get Sirius out of trouble, especially at the expense of accusing his own brother. Or maybe the whole plan was to get his brother into trouble as some sort of weird revenge for what happened on the Quidditch pitch. It was all very odd.

"Hmm, possibly," said Madam Pomfrey. She cast a few diagnostic spells before replying again. "I'll knock up some potion for you Sirius, which should get you back to normal in no time. And you," she said, looking pointedly at Rosier and then at the medicine that she'd placed on the table next to his bed, "need to drink that up unless your bones to stay broken forever."

"I think I'd rather stay like this than drink that. It tastes like vomit," he muttered. Madam Pomfrey looked like she wanted to argue with him, but didn't – likely as not, she'd been having the same argument with him all week. Instead, she huffed at him and went off to brew something for Sirius.

I turned back to Sirius. There wasn't really much to talk about in front of Rosier: we couldn't talk about the animagi, and I couldn't grill Sirius about his reasons for doing it either. If it was something Sirius was reluctant to tell me, he definitely wouldn't want Rosier to know. I settled for talking about family issues because I was pretty sure that everyone in Slytherin already knew about it anyway.

"Have you written to Andromeda recently?" I asked, ignoring the scowls coming from the side of the room at the mention of her name. After the ridiculous grilling I'd had from his brother Evan about Andromeda and 'Blood Purity', I wasn't in the mood for more criticism on that front.

"Yes, I wrote and told her about your quidditch, and about James and me being on the team again this year. She wrote back to tell me you'd already told her all that, and that she's really pleased we're talking to each other," said Sirius. "By the way, what's up with you and Cissy?"

I was glad that Sirius had chosen to bring that up: I'd wanted to talk to someone about it with someone for ages but most of my friends didn't really know how to sympathise with it. Sirius, however, had managed to spend almost three years thinking that I hated him so might actually have an idea of what was going on in my cousin's head.

"She found out about the letters and also about me being friends with you, and thinks that I've betrayed her or something," I explained. "And then her friends decided she was being stupid about it and sided with me even though I didn't ask them to."

"Have you tried talking with her about it?" asked Sirius, as if I hadn't already thought about it and as if it would actually do anything at all.

"Of course I have! But Sirius, she's as stubborn as _you_ are, so she didn't listen for more than two milliseconds. Besides, she's got it into her head that you and Andromeda betrayed her, so anyone who talks to them has too."

"I think she's taking it a bit far with that, but I can sort of see what she means about Andromeda," said Sirius.

"What?" I asked, rather confused. Did Sirius believe all that rubbish Mother and Father said about Andromeda being an utter disgrace and a traitor to everything our family stood for? Did he think that Ted was a 'freak of nature' and an 'abomination which ought to be disposed of before society found out'? Surely not – Sirius was a Gryffindor and his Gryffindor friends would have grilled him alive if he thought any of that were true.

"I meant that she's probably feeling very confused and hurt because her sister's left her without telling her why and hasn't contacted her for weeks. Wouldn't you feel upset if I suddenly left home, and then you found out that I'd started a family all of my own with someone you'd never met or didn't like?"

"I guess I'd be angry with you," I said. I hadn't thought about it till then, but it hadn't just been Sirius that hadn't known about Andromeda's relationship with Ted and the pregnancy. Asides from Ted, I'd been the only one to know about Nymphadora before the summer, and Bella had been the only other person to even know that she'd been dating anyone. Maybe Cissy was upset that she'd been kept in the dark, but that still didn't explain why she hated me for not-hating her sister.

"Exactly. She already hates me for being in Gryffindor, and she's upset because of all that awful stuff Bella's been doing recently. So if you add in the fact that you're getting letters from both her sisters and you've made up with me, that makes her even more upset with you," said Sirius.

"Hmm, I suppose that makes some sense." I was surprised that Sirius had actually tried to come up with an explanation for her behaviour; the fact that he'd hit on something that seemed even the slightest bit plausible was something of a miracle. It made me feel a lot better to think there was some possibility that Cissy was just angry with Andromeda and that she hadn't just suddenly started hating her. That meant that it was possible that she might one day forgive her sister, even though it was extremely unlikely that any situation like what I'd seen in that mirror at Christmas would ever happen – there was just no way that Mother, Father, Bellatrix, Aunt Druella and Uncle Cygnus would ever be happy with Andromeda's marriage.

"Oh, Pomfrey's back," muttered Sirius. Indeed, the healer was back and was carrying with her a glass containing a potion that looked rather a lot like urine and smelled vile. She handed it to Sirius and I watched his facial expression turn to one of absolute disgust – it looked rather funny along with the dog face. He slowly put the glass to his lips and tilted it very slightly until the liquid touched his mouth. Then he tipped it back very suddenly and swallowed the entire thing in one gulp.

The potion worked. Sirius must have found it extremely annoying, but I watched him closely and didn't really take my eyes off him as he changed back. First the ears changed shape and position, then the muzzle, and then gradually, as the rest of the face changed shape, the black fur disappeared, leaving Sirius looking relatively normal if not a tad bit red in the face.

As soon as Sirius was human again, Madam Pomfrey handed him a glass of water, which had seemingly appeared out of nowhere. She then told us to head off to our next lesson and turned her attention back to her other patient: "See, Sirius drank _his_ potion," she said in an excruciatingly patronising manner. I hurried Sirius off out of the door so that we wouldn't have to listen to them.

"Anyone would think that git actually wanted to be in the hospital wing," commented Sirius, as we walked as fast as possible in the opposite direction to the hospital wing.

"Maybe he does."

"Don't be daft, Reg. That place is hell – James and I have been in there enough to last a lifetime," said Sirius. I remembered what Andromeda had said about Sirius having to go there after his first proper flying lesson because of an 'accident' that was probably part of the reason why Sirius loathed Rosier so much. Eleven-year-old Sirius had been knocked off his broom, but luckily, after some intervention by his older cousin, Rosier had never actually done anything to physically harm him after that. Sirius's other injuries had been caused by other means.

"I don't like it much either," I said, "but then I don't really like my dormitory much. I told you before about having nightmares, and about how cold it gets in the winter didn't I? Then last week everyone woke up because someone was screaming in the middle of the night – that's why everyone looked dog-tired at the Quidditch try-outs." To be fair, that particular night had been worse than usual. A normal night in the dormitory was a lot better than in the hospital wing: I'd never stayed in there for long, but just knowing that I wasn't allowed to get up made me restless and wishing I could get out of there.

"Yeah, I noticed that. You had massive black circles round your eyes for the whole thing."

"Thanks Siri."

"Your welcome," said Sirius. We carried on talking until we came to the end of the corridor and had to go in opposite directions. I turned right to go to charms, while Sirius went left to whatever lesson he had next.

…..

_AN: Thanks to everyone who's been reviewing. Sorry this took so long. I've had a lot of work and I've also spent a lot of time reading a very good fanfiction by 'Seirios Aster' called 'Light of A Fading Star'. It's very AU and a few details aren't in cannon because parts were written before the author read book seven but it's an extremely good read. It's also very long._

_I hope you enjoyed reading this. 'Am I A Monster' will also be updated soon, and I have a relatively new story called 'Because Houses Don't Really Matter', about the aftermath of Regulus's sorting. _

_Please review._


	10. Chapter 10

_Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. This is just for fun._

_AN: Sorry for the recent lack of updates. I've had a bit of a break from writing due to exams and holidays and it has taken me a while to get back into it. It has also taken me a while to write this chapter because I kept getting really stuck, particularly on the dialogue and on a few issues I had with certain characters. Please bear with me on some of the characterisation as some of it will be explained in later chapters._

**Chapter 10: Charms Class**

"Where the hell were you last lesson, Regulus?" asked Avery as I slid reluctantly into the seat next to him. I would much rather have sat with the Ravenclaws on the other side of the room, but, according to the other members of my house, that wasn't allowed, and there were no spaces there anyway. It had been a choice between Avery and Crouch, so I chose the former – it was better to sit by someone who tolerated me than someone who absolutely hated my guts.

"Um, uh… I had to take a friend to the hospital wing," I answered.

"Oh, did you see my-" began Evan from behind us. I drowned him out because I was trying to listen to Avery talking.

"But all your friends are in this class or History of Magic," said Avery. "I do hope you weren't with anyone from Gryffindor."

"Don't be daft, Avery. Not even Regulus would be that dumb," said Evan. "Or would he?" he added, studying my face a little too intently. I tried not to show any emotion – if Gryffindors were not allowed, then my 'idiot brother' certainly would be.

"Actually I've got friends in other years too."

"You mean that boy in Cissy's year? The one with the glasses that likes potions?" asked Avery.

Before I could say anything, the classroom door opened and in walked Professor Flitwick. Flitwick was my favourite teacher: he seemed to genuinely like me, gave me good marks, and didn't insist that I went to really boring and awkward meetings like Professor Slughorn did. I usually found the lessons interesting and their content useful.

"Today class, you will be learning the spell _Aresto Momentum,_" began the Professor after taking the register. "Would anyone like to tell me what it is used for?"

I'd forgotten the spell until he had now mentioned it, but now I thought about it I recognised the name of it. Not just from our second-year spell book (I remembered seeing it in the index), but also because I'd seen it used before when we still had our old House Elf. Kreacher's Mother had been Mother's house elf before she was married and therefore had moved in with her. However, she was elderly, even for a House Elf, and anyone who saw her would have seen that she was sick. She had been extremely wobbly on her skinny little legs and she had also started to forget things. She would even forget who she was talking to, and kept referring to Sirius and me as 'Al and Cygnus'. Sirius, at the age of six, had found this extremely funny.

One day the four of us, Mother, Father, Sirius and I, had been sitting around the table for dinner. Kreacher had already cleared away the dishes from our starter, and his Mother came tottering out of the kitchen carrying the main course. As she neared the table, she tripped over a rug and the dishes literally went flying into the air and started to fall towards the table. Father had used the spell '_Aresto Momentum_' making them slowdown in the air so that he and Sirius could catch them, but not before some of their contents had spilled out onto the table cloth.

Mother had been furious: this was not the first time the house elf had messed up. Father quickly locked Sirius and I out of the dining room before the real shouting started, but the two of us heard everything, even the words _'Avada Kedavra'_. After that, all I remember is crying a lot and seeing the horrible head on the staircase the next day. I was afraid to use the staircase on my own for weeks afterwards.

Knowing the spell, I raised my hand to answer the Professor. I noticed that half the Ravenclaws, Evan and Mulciber, who was sitting next to Evan, also had their hands raised. The latter two looked strangely guilty about it too.

Professor Flitwick looked surprised that so many people had heard of it already. Usually when he asked about a charm it would be me and maybe one or two Ravenclaws. He chose Mulciber to answer – probably because the boy had never raised his hand to answer a question in any of our lessons and the Professor wanted to give everyone a chance.

"It's a charm used to slow the movement or falling of objects," said Mulciber, flatly. He turned to look at Evan and I noticed he looked downcast and as if he was greatly annoyed with himself.

"That is correct. Ten points to Slytherin," said Flitwick. He then started to talk a bit more in detail about the spell as Mulciber really hadn't said very much about it. The spell could be used on anything, including humans.

While he was talking, Grace Goyle leaned across the gap between the desks and whispered so loudly into Evan's ear that both Avery and I could hear every word. "Hey Rosier, I bet you could have done with that spell at Quidditch last week, couldn't you," she said. Evan didn't say anything but Mulciber looked like he wanted to hit her. He didn't though because it was a lesson.

"Now, I do not want anyone throwing things around the room," said Flitwick. "I want you to work in pairs. One of you will hold up an object like this," he picked up a small ball made out of spongy material, "and drop it. The other person will cast the spell." He then started to walk around the room holding out a box full of items made out of the same material as the ball and letting each of us choose one. Mulciber and Rosier, much to everyone's surprise, managed the spell on their first try and earned twenty points to Slytherin. After a few goes I managed it too. Avery accidently turned his object into a flowerpot.

Professor Flitwick let us go to lunch five minutes early so the corridors were almost deserted, except for the others from my charms class. I was herded in the direction of the Great Hall along with the other Slytherins. Avery asked if I wanted to borrow his history of magic notes and without thinking I said yes; behind me Mulciber and Evan were whispering to one another, Grace and Millicent chatted idly about boys, and Barty Crouch plodded along behind all of us sulking (he'd fallen out with the others a few days ago for reasons I didn't know). The company was so far from riveting that I was almost glad when a hand came out of nowhere and shoved me hard against the wall, knocking my wand onto the floor. Or maybe not…

"What the hell do you think you're doing, Black! Thanks to you and your stupid brother I've got three months' worth of detention!" whoever it was shouted. Their hand had moved up so that it was around my throat. Their wand was pointed at my head.

"What are you talking about? I haven't said anything!" I managed to say. It was difficult to make any sound at all since my captor was putting so much pressure on my neck. I struggled against it and looked up: it was the Quidditch Captain, Evan's brother Damien Rosier. This wasn't good: not only was he four years older and knew more spells than me, but it was also extremely unlikely that anyone would stand up to him, especially since he was Evan's brother.

"You know what I mean. You and those stupid Marauders-"

"Let me go. I haven't done anything!" I wheezed.

"Regulus hasn't done anything! He's got nothing to do with the Marauders. He doesn't even like Sirius!" countered Avery, his voice shaking. He was the only one of my companions that I would have considered calling a friend, but I was still surprised he'd said anything at all (he usually acted scared out of his wits at any confrontation). He looked surprised at himself too. However, I was glad that he had since everyone else except for Evan and Mulciber had scarpered. I pretty sure that Mulciber had just stayed because Evan had, but I didn't know what Evan was doing – the past few weeks his actions had been all over the place. And after what his brother had said earlier I wasn't entirely sure whose side he was on. Speaking of that incident, I wondered whether that was what his other brother appeared so annoyed about. I decided to pretend to know nothing of it just in case.

The older boy either didn't care or didn't believe him as his grip on my neck tightened, making it impossible to breathe.

"Leave Regulus alone, Damien!" shouted Evan. "If Sirius has done something to offend you take it up with him instead, but don't just go around threatening people."

"I don't see why I shouldn't. And what's it got to do with you anyway? Last time I checked, you and Regulus weren't even friends."

"We're not, but that doesn't mean I'm going to let you send him to the Hospital Wing for something he didn't even do."

"Well what are you going to do about it then?" Evan's older brother taunted.

"Expelliarmus!" shouted Avery. The sixth year just laughed and deflected it with an inaudible shield charm. He didn't even need to let go of me to get his wand arm free. Black spots were starting to swim in and out of my vision, but I could still make out what was going on

"Is that the best you've got?"

"Stupefy!" Red light shot out of Evan's wand. Again, the spell was stopped, but the curse served its purpose because in order to block it, the sixth year had to let go of me. I staggered over to where Avery was and tried to get my breath back. Evan, however, seemed to have lost interest in me and was busy duelling with his brother.

"Petrifi-" he began. But just as he began the full-body-bind incantation, a jet of green-blue light shot out of the end of his brother's wand, sending him flying more than twenty feet down the corridor. When he landed, his whole body started to convulse as if he was having some kind of fit. Mulciber ran over to him, while Avery stayed next to me, helping me to breathe right. I felt sick, and not because of the dizziness caused by nearly being strangled, but because the two of them were brothers and I knew that however much me and Sirius argued, Sirius would never do anything like that to me. I wondered what had happened between them to make them hate one another so much.

Damien Rosier just smirked at us; evidently he was pleased with his own handiwork. He kicked my fallen wand over to me and waited. I wasn't expecting what happened next.

He ran over to where Evan was lying and knelt down beside him, whispering something I couldn't hear. Then he pointed his wand at Evan's chest and said what must have been the counter curse.

"Evan? Are you alright? What happened?" he asked. Avery and Mulciber looked flabbergasted, but I didn't. I'd seen this trick before when Evan and his other brother Tristan had cursed me. It was meant to fool teachers or other observers that they were innocent acting concerned for the victim they'd just cursed. However usually they only ever played that card when there were teachers present, and there were no teachers in sight. I turned around just to check but there definitely weren't – just a tall, dark-haired boy wearing Ravenclaw robes.

"I'm not stupid, Rosier. I know it was you," he said.

"Whatever Corner, you've got nothing to prove it."

"Ah, that's what you think."

While they were arguing, we made a run for it: Avery and Mulciber dragged Evan behind them until we came to a stop by the entrance hall. By the time we got there Evan had claimed he'd recovered and refused to go to the hospital wing under any circumstances anyway.

…..

_**Extra Scene:**__ This is my first attempt at the first chapter for this, so not all things are exactly consistent. However, I found it on my computer and thought you might want to see. It's set before Regulus goes to Andromeda's wedding._

"Regulus, why are you packing dress robes for a sleepover?" asked my Father. He picked up the robes that I had neatly folded and packed out of my trunk and began hanging them back up in the wardrobe. It was extremely annoying having him standing there watching me – at least I had already packed the pretty necklace and presents before he'd entered the room. (I'd wrapped them in my pyjamas.)

"But what if we go out to dinner, Father?" I asked innocently. He didn't really need to know that I wasn't intending to spend the night at my friend's house at all, or that the dress robes were actually for an entirely different purpose.

"Regulus, I've known Becky's parents for over twelve years! The only time I have ever seen them wear anything formal was when they came here! You're lucky we even allowed you to talk to them," said Father. I knew what he meant: Becky's family were nowhere near as uptight on tradition as my own family, and were what my father called 'soft' in respect to their beliefs on blood purity. Father let me befriend her, solely for the reason that her Father was pureblood, rich and of a high social status. After certain events involving Becky's sister and a half-blood, however, Mother wasn't quite so keen on the idea of us talking to one another. I was partly glad of this, as it meant she was no longer trying to arrange a marriage between the two of us, but I was worried in case she banned me from seeing her.

"But, can't I…" I began.

"No. Go and take your suitcase downstairs before I change my mind about letting you go," he said. I didn't argue. To him it may have seemed like an ordinary trip to my friend's house, but to me it was something much bigger. It was the day of my cousin's wedding, so as soon as my Father had dropped me off, we would be heading straight there.

The suitcase wasn't heavy. Thanks to my father, all it had was my pyjamas, a change of clothing, a wash-kit and the presents I'd packed. I carried it down the staircases and into the hallway with ease, and dumped it next to Sirius, who was standing in the corner sulking. I wasn't sure if it was because he couldn't see Andromeda or because he wasn't allowed to talk to James.

"Father, how come _Regulus_ is allowed to see his friends and I'm not?" whined Sirius.

"Sirius, shut up. You're still in disgrace for lying to us about that Lupin friend of yours, and for sneaking off on your own to see that idiot James Potter," said Father.

"James isn't an idiot!" I argued. "He's a good friend to Sirius, _and_ he's on the Quidditch team!"

"Shut up, Sirius. I said you're not allowed and that's final," said Father, firmly. He didn't seem to notice that it had been me that had said it and not Sirius. Sirius just glared at me for butting in. I didn't blame him: I'd probably landed him in even more trouble.

"Why don't you come too?" I asked.

"Why would I want to hang around with _you _and your stupid friends?" said Sirius.

"Um, maybe you could talk to her sister," I suggested. I couldn't tell him the real reason I wanted him to come because Father was still standing next to us.

"She's a dippy air head, Regulus. I'm not going," said Sirius.

"Please."

"No, Regulus."

"Please, Siri."

"No!" Sirius stomped back up the stairs. I look up as he walked across the first floor landing and almost caused the ceiling to cave in. I wished I'd tried harder earlier when I'd tried to get him to come: instead, I'd backed away when the door was slammed in my face. And now, because I hadn't tried hard enough, I'd be the only family member able to be with Andromeda on her special day.

"Come on, Regulus, let's go," said Father. He grabbed hold of my arm with on hand, and my trunk with the other, and dragged me out the door. We walked in silence all of the way to my friend's house, where my Father left me at the doorstep.

…

_AN: Thanks so much for everyone who has stuck with me through this story. Coming up soon: Regulus catches up with his history, gets a very confused explanation from Mulciber, tries to talk to his cousin, sees Sirius again, and reads an interesting letter. _

_Please tell me what you think of my characterisation, and also what you think is going on that Regulus doesn't know about. Did you like the little story about the House Elf?_

_Also, please tell me, if you were Regulus would you read someone's diary? If so whose? And would it be a friend's or an enemy's diary/journal? _

_Please review._


	11. Chapter 11

_Disclaimer: I don't own Hogwarts, magic, the Blacks, Mulciber, Rosier or Avery. Anything you recognise that's not mine is J. 's._

_AN: Sorry this took so long. I've been on work experience and two holidays, and I've also been really distracted by Hunger Games recently. If you look at my favourites list it has become a little bit full of stories about Finnick and Annie. Oops. I still love Harry Potter though._

**Chapter Eleven: Crucio**

I couldn't believe the others had stuck up for me. I could maybe see that Avery had been shy before and had grown a bit more of a backbone. He was my friend after all and friends were supposed to stick up for one another. But Evan and Mulciber were a different story. Given last year's "Aw, does Reggiekins not like seeing his blood-traitor brother get what he deserves? Pity that. I thought it was funny," comment and that the two of them had both laughed at my reaction to the boggart that year, I wasn't sure what to think. Evan been absolutely horrible to me last year and now it seemed like he was trying to help me. Maybe last year had all been an act: maybe this year was too. Or maybe he'd decided to switch sides.

The other Slytherins, however, were of course extremely reluctant to talk about any of it, especially concerning their reasons. Evan Rosier wasn't talking at all and for that I didn't blame him – he was still shaking from earlier. I didn't know what curse had hit him, but it looked bad: if it hadn't been for the lack of screaming I would have thought it was the torture curse.

I did know Damian's main reason for attacking me though. I was pretty sure it tied in with the incident with Sirius this morning. I remembered his brother had accused him of putting polyjuice potion in Sirius's drink, which he hadn't done and couldn't deny doing either. Since I was Sirius's brother and had probably been seen going out of the Great Hall with Sirius, that meant it would most likely have been me who had accused him. If you looked at it from the Quidditch Captain's point of view, it made perfect sense to confront me: I would have been pretty livid if it had been the other way around – I just probably wouldn't have wanted to attack someone that much older than me. What I didn't understand was how he gone from "if you hurt my baby brother again" you will 'insert horrible incident here', to openly cursing him. It didn't make sense and I had to find out why.

"Do any of you know what that curse actually was?" asked Avery.

Since Evan still wasn't talking and I had no clue whatsoever, Mulciber answered for us. "It's a spell my brother and Evan's brothers were working on last summer. I think the basic idea of it is to make it look as if you've cast the Cruciatus Curse on someone without it actually hurting them."

"But Evan looks hurt anyway," said Avery, at the same time as I also asked: "Why would they want to do that?"

Mulciber looked quickly around the Great Hall, which was rapidly filling up with people, as if worried people might overhear. "Look, I can't tell you here. Let's go outside."

"Bu'wha'abou'unch?" asked Avery, his mouth filled with food. It was a wonder it didn't all spill out everywhere.

"Just eat up quickly."

...

* * *

><p>Ten minutes later the four of us were standing in the same small space I had been standing with the Marauders in earlier. I wondered how it was that both Slytherins and Gryffindors were able to use the same hiding spot and still have their secrets remain a secret. Maybe it was partly to do with the fact that it had been me that had chosen the location before.<p>

"Now can you tell us?" I asked impatiently, after doing about fifty checks to make sure absolutely no one was around to overhear.

"Stop being impatient! I have to answer your question first anyway, I think. What was it again?"

"Why would they want to create a spell that looked like Crucio?" I reiterated.

"Oh yeah. Do you promise not to tell anyone? I mean anyone: not your parents, or Narcissa, or any of those stupid Hufflepuffs," said Mulciber. I nodded despite the fact he'd just insulted half my friends. "Okay then. It's because Evan's brother is going to join the Death Eaters."

That wasn't exactly very helpful. I already suspected that the oldest Rosier would do that since he seemed to like cursing people and was nearly seventeen (if not seventeen already).

"But I thought Tristan and Henry were against the Death Eaters now, 'cos of what happened at Easter," said Avery. (Henry was Mulciber's brother.)

"Th-they, uh, we are," said Evan, quietly. It was the first time he'd said anything since getting cursed, and he sounded hurt. If the curse really was meant to mimic the _effects_ of the Cruciatus Curse it had certainly done a good job. Evan Rosier looked as jittery and shaky as I remembered being after being with Rodolphus. In fact I wasn't at all convinced that it hadn't actually _been_ Crucio that his brother had cast at him. That is, if it hadn't been for the light and the throwing backwards part, which were definitely not characteristic of Crucio.

"If you're against them, what's the point in helping them?" I asked.

"Well to be honest I think it's a bit of a stupid plan, but I'll try and explain it anyway. When you join the Death Eaters they make you do a task, like an initiation thing, to prove how loyal you are, and from what we've heard, it usually involves using Unforgivables," explained Mulciber. "And if you don't do it, or you can't do it, then," he mimed slitting his throat.

"So is all this in case he gets scared or doesn't want to do any Unforgivables?" asked Avery.

"Yeah, pretty much," said Mulciber. To me it seemed like a long-winded and not very safe plan, but then I remembered that Evan's brothers, particularly the middle one, often came up with far-fetched ridiculous ideas anyway. I remembered a few days before the Quidditch try-outs Evan and Tristan had been discussing something called 'Operation Befriend a Gryffindork' – I had no idea what they could possibly achieve by doing that or how they would have any success whatsoever. What idiot in Gryffindor would ever want to be friends with_ them_? I'd decided not to pursue it. There had also been last year's "let's steal Regulus's fluffy toy and give it to James Potter", and "let's invite Sirius to the party even though we hate him, he hates us, and Father hates him too," and a whole load of other random things.

"I don't want my brother to die, Death Eater or not," whimpered Evan. I didn't much like Evan but he was still trembling and shaking so much that I couldn't help but worry. What struck me was that he hadn't said anything, nor had anyone else noticed anything was wrong with him. Maybe they didn't know that much about the curse – I was pretty sure neither Mulciber nor Avery had ever been under it anyway. I was about to ask Evan if he was still hurt and if so why he hadn't said anything when Avery cut me off.

"But why did he cast it at Evan just now?" he asked. It was a good question because, really, if the curse didn't really do anything much, what was the point in casting it?

"Probably to scare you two to death," said Mulciber, looking at me in particular.

"But the spell doesn't work properly and Evan's hurt," I said.

"What do you mean it doesn't work?" asked Avery.

"Why in Merlin's name haven't you said anything, Evan?"

I explained how the curse didn't really look that much like the Cruciatus Curse was supposed to. The others were a bit confused about this, and I hoped it was because neither of them had seen it done before. Unfortunately, while I was in the middle of explaining what the curse looked like, Evan decided it would be a good time to interrupt:

"So my brother _was_ doing it right then? The other time, during summer, I mean."

"_What other time?" _I wanted to ask. I really hoped they hadn't been practicing 'Unforgivables' like Crucio over the holidays, but some part of me was telling me that, yes they probably had – they'd practiced Imperio after all! I really really hoped it hadn't been doing it the time when Sirius had visited them and that they hadn't used Sirius as a test subject: surely Sirius would have said something if that'd been the case.

I started listing the signs you would expect to see if someone was being cursed. All the while Evan Rosier was looking increasingly panicked and Mulciber was looking increasingly flustered.

"But he said it didn't hurt – that he was acting!" cried Evan. I wasn't sure who he was talking about; hopefully not Sirius.

"I thought it was s'posed to make you go mad and put you in hospital for weeks!" said Mulciber. "He was much less jittery than how you are now and he certainly wasn't like he was when… you know… that incident tha-"

"What incident? What are you on about now?" I asked.

"Nothing to do with you, Regulus," was the answer I got. "We've told you enough already. Now go to the library and sit with the Ravenclaws or something."

"Yeah, go away, Regulus. And you, Avery."

...

* * *

><p>I headed off to the library but I didn't sit with the Ravenclaws because the Ravenclaws didn't have History of Magic with us. Instead, since all the Slytherins were sat in the Great Hall or were still arguing about some person that I didn't know who that had been hit with a curse, I sat with the Hufflepuffs.<p>

"Where were you? I missed sitting next to someone else who actually listens to Professor Binns," said my friend Robert as I dumped my bag full of books on the table where he and Emily Cooper were sitting. Robert was one of my closet friends at Hogwarts, along with Stephannie and Rebecca. He wasn't particularly clever but always made an effort to take immaculate notes, pay attention in class and write extremely long, neat essays. Even in History of Magic, which hardly anyone seemed to like. Emily was a friend, but we weren't really that close. Last year she'd had a bit of crush on me because I'd 'saved' her. I hadn't really done much: just squirted the Rosiers with water and taken a curse for it.

"I had to take Sirius to the hospital wing," I explained. I didn't need to hide the fact that I was close to Sirius from them – they'd known more about how I felt about Sirius than Sirius had last year. "Could I borrow your notes?"

"Sure." He slid his notebook across to me, which he had already written up his notes into (for some reason he liked to scribble down as much as possible onto parchment during the lesson and then write it up neatly later). I copied them down as quickly as I could and then looked up.

Across the library I spotted Cissy. She looked lonely and was eyeing the advanced potions section sadly. I remembered Avery telling me that there was a fourth-year 'spells club' and a second-year 'potions club', and that Cissy would have been part of the potions club had she not fallen out with most of her friends. She glanced at me and then looked quickly away again. She hadn't glared; she just looked hurt.

I excused myself and started to walk over to where she was standing, still holding my quill. As I got closer, Cissy pretended to look a lot more interested in the book titles than she had previously.

"Cissy? You alright?" I asked. She continued to study the shelves intently. "Cissy, I'm sorry about what happened with Andromeda," I said quietly.

"No you're not! Go away!"

"But Cissy-"

"Don't 'but Cissy' me! You could have told me you know! I'm her sister! You knew she was with that stupid mudblood and you didn't even tell me anything!"

"She told me to keep it a secret," I said. "And I promised her I wouldn't tell."

"We promised one other we'd tell each other everything. Does that mean nothing to you?"

"No, I… I mean."

"Exactly. You chose her over me. Family are supposed to stick together and what happens? My sister goes and ruins everything and then you go and side with her about it!"

"Cissy-"

"I don't want to hear it, Reg. Just go and finish your homework or something."

With one last look at Cissy, who was now giving me the death glare, I trudged back over to the homework table and began working again. Eventually Cissy would come round – preferably before the Christmas holidays – but evidently not today. At least I knew what she was so annoyed with me about.

…..

_AN: I hoped you liked it. Again, I'm sorry about it taking so long. Please have a look at some of my other stories. And, if you haven't already, read the Hunger Games series and The Morganville Vampires series. Both are really good an managed to knock my Harry Potter obsession for a while._

_I will be doing another alternative view point soon – probably Sirius, but I have had an idea to do Mrs Black. If you have any ideas, please tell me._

_Lastly, please tell me what you think by reviewing. Reviews do help because I like to know what parts were most enjoyable and how to improve my story. I also like to hear your predictions about what it to come._


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